Removing Disqus to enhance my readers privacy
When Disqus comments are enabled an additional 24 requests, some to external 3rd parties, are required for each page load. To address my readers privacy concerns, I removed Disqus commenting.
177 Words
2021-02-08 11:03 -0600
In my haste to add user comments to this website, I did not take into account the privacy of my readers. While I believe privacy on the Internet is mostly a thing of the past, I don’t want my site to be a contributing factor its further erosion.
I stumbled across this issue while debugging a display problem. Using the Safari developer tools, we see there are 24 external requests per page load when Disqus commenting is enabled:
Probably more concerning to my privacy conscious readers, Disqus uses a number of external third parties. Multiple requests are logged to Facebook and Google servers for each page load:
jemurray@jasons-mbp:~/Downloads $ cat jasonmurray.org.har | jq -r .log.entries[].request.url | grep -v 'https://jasonmurray.org/'
https://a.disquscdn.com/1611874952/images/noavatar92.png
https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/iframerpc?action=checkOrigin&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com&client_id=508198334196-bgmagrg0a2rub674g0shidj8fnd50dji.apps.googleusercontent.com
https://accounts.google.com/o/cspreport
https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/iframe#origin=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com&rpcToken=746490973.8318144&clearCache=1
https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/iframe#origin=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com&rpcToken=746490973.8318144&clearCache=1
https://apis.google.com/_/scs/apps-static/_/js/k=oz.gapi.en_US.3k1wIje1lec.O/m=auth2/rt=j/sv=1/d=1/ed=1/am=wQE/rs=AGLTcCNT4ir0QEJ6sXXAMZvqjav9vQSaLw/cb=gapi.loaded_0
https://apis.google.com/js/api.js
https://c.disquscdn.com/next/embed/styles/realtime.af77184dec69e96e69aff958ae2bb738.css
https://c.disquscdn.com/next/embed/styles/realtime.af77184dec69e96e69aff958ae2bb738.css
https://c.disquscdn.com/next/embed/lounge.bundle.ec325e7c33ae32f082a2c57fe0c859bd.js
https://c.disquscdn.com/next/embed/assets/font/icons.4cc7a703d2fdfe684151ff8ac24d45f1.woff2
https://c.disquscdn.com/next/embed/styles/lounge.0f8247d0689845c86c5bfcd8efd31a28.css
https://c.disquscdn.com/next/embed/common.bundle.38ea27189bdb723eae3dabf5bc7b8c0b.js
https://c.disquscdn.com/next/embed/lounge.load.d92e3c2dd4530beaef2329d8676faf04.js
https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js?hash=b032072813c2a579b33f6035d4ab54f4
https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js
https://disqus.com/api/3.0/forums/details?forum=jasonmurray-org&attach=forumFeatures&api_key=E8Uh5l5fHZ6gD8U3KycjAIAk46f68Zw7C6eW8WSjZvCLXebZ7p0r1yrYDrLilk2F
https://disqus.com/next/config.js
https://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&f=jasonmurray-org&t_u=https%3A%2F%2Fjasonmurray.org%2Fposts%2F2021%2Fmonitorwireless%2F&t_d=Monitoring%20layer-1%20wireless%20traffic%20with%20Linux&t_t=Monitoring%20layer-1%20wireless%20traffic%20with%20Linux&s_o=default#version=d92e3c2dd4530beaef2329d8676faf04
https://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&f=jasonmurray-org&t_u=https%3A%2F%2Fjasonmurray.org%2Fposts%2F2021%2Fmonitorwireless%2F&t_d=Monitoring%20layer-1%20wireless%20traffic%20with%20Linux&t_t=Monitoring%20layer-1%20wireless%20traffic%20with%20Linux&s_o=default#version=d92e3c2dd4530beaef2329d8676faf04
https://jasonmurray-org.disqus.com/embed.js
https://referrer.disqus.com/juggler/event.gif?abe=0&embed_hidden=0&load_time=1142&event=init_embed&thread=8387161190&forum=jasonmurray-org&forum_id=4689946&imp=2dfqc27umsm7f&prev_imp&thread_slug=monitoring_layer_1_wireless_traffic_with_linux&user_type=anon&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fjasonmurray.org&theme=next&dnt=0&tracking_enabled=0&experiment=network_default_hidden&variant=fallthrough&service=dynamic&promoted_enabled=false&max_enabled=false
https://ssl.gstatic.com/accounts/o/3920524159-idpiframe.js
https://www.facebook.com/x/oauth/status?ancestor_origins=https%3A%2F%2Fjasonmurray.org&client_id=52254943976&input_token&origin=1&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefault%26f%3Djasonmurray-org%26t_u%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fjasonmurray.org%252Fposts%252F2021%252Fmonitorwireless%252F%26t_d%3DMonitoring%2520layer-1%2520wireless%2520traffic%2520with%2520Linux%26t_t%3DMonitoring%2520layer-1%2520wireless%2520traffic%2520with%2520Linux%26s_o%3Ddefault%23version%3Dd92e3c2dd4530beaef2329d8676faf04&sdk=joey&wants_cookie_data=false
To resolve these unnecessary privacy concerns, I removed the Disqus comment service from my site:
# disqusShortname = "jasonmurray-org"
There are now 4 requests per page load. They all stay local to my site:
