[Solved] How to remove Alphabet (/Google) trackers & cookies on site

Hosting on Micro.blog
1

I ran my micro.blog-hosted site through The Markup’s Blacklight tool, and it picked up 1 ad tracker, and 2 third-party cookies — all from Alphabet Inc. (aka Google).

Is this likely to be because I have embedded YouTube videos? Or because I once experimented with using Google WebFonts via @import? (These are no longer active on my site.)

Any hints on how I might pinpoint and remove them, gratefully received. Thanks.

2

Yes, the trick is to not embed anything from Google. There’s a way to embed YouTube videos without setting cookies, but it will still track your visitors.

3

Thanks Sven! If I take those embeds out, will the cookies go with them? Or is my site forever infected in some insidious way now?

4

Well, yes and no. :blush:

Yes, the warning in the Blacklight tool will go away once you’ve cleaned your site from all Google embeds.

But no, cookies already set on individual visitors web browsers will be there until they expire. Or the person decide for themselves to manually remove the cookies. But the cookies will be harmless in this case, as they won’t be going back to Google’s servers once you remove all the embeds.

5

Thanks again — excellent explanation!

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