4 votes

Why does a completely local, self-contained html file need to access gstatic.com?

So, I'm a privacy advocate (or paranoiac, depending on your perspective). I run both uMatrix and NoScript plug-ins (among others) in my Firefox browser, so I can see when and where websites send calls out to other locations, and block the ones I want ... google analytics, google fonts, google-apis, google tag manager, and gstatic are all ubiquitous out there, probably 99% of websites use at least one of them (PS: Tildes is in the 1%; yeay, Deimos).

And note ... there may well be nothing at all wrong with any of those sites/services ... but Google has a global all-encompassing Terms and Conditions policy that says, you use anything of Theirs, and They are allowed to harvest your personal data and make money off of it.

And I do not accept those terms.

Okay, that's the prologue. The deal is, I have a small piece of documentation, just basic "how to use this" info, for a WordPress plug-in. It is in .html format, with bundled bootstrap and jquery and a few other assets.

Nothing, anywhere in the entire folder, references gstatic. And yet when I open this local, on-my-computer-only html file ... my browser tells me that it is trying to connect to gstatic.com.

Anyone happen to know why/how that is happening?

7 comments

  1. [6]
    Diff
    Link
    What asset is it reaching out for on gstatic?

    What asset is it reaching out for on gstatic?

    8 votes
    1. [5]
      Eric_the_Cerise
      Link Parent
      NoScript doesn't say, and I didn't (originally) pay enough attention to the uMatrix info. But Bingo ... uMatrix pointed out that it had a reference to google-fonts which, I assume, further...

      NoScript doesn't say, and I didn't (originally) pay enough attention to the uMatrix info.

      But Bingo ... uMatrix pointed out that it had a reference to google-fonts which, I assume, further references gstatic.

      Found the font links in the html file, commented them out and reloaded it, and poof, no more Google.

      Danke.

      10 votes
      1. [3]
        hamstergeddon
        Link Parent
        To give you back some faith in the world, as a web developer I try to always host google fonts myself when I use them. I just don't see a reason to use "the cloud" all willy nilly for something...

        To give you back some faith in the world, as a web developer I try to always host google fonts myself when I use them. I just don't see a reason to use "the cloud" all willy nilly for something that critical to the proper display of a website. There's probably some performance gain by loading the fonts via a CDN like that, but not worth it, imo.

        7 votes
        1. [2]
          Jedi
          Link Parent
          Google Fonts are often cached, thanks to its popularity.

          Google Fonts are often cached, thanks to its popularity.

          2 votes
          1. Adys
            Link Parent
            Shared caching like this is no longer useful, because popular browsers now partition cache by domain. Its benefits always were … dubious at best.

            Shared caching like this is no longer useful, because popular browsers now partition cache by domain.

            Its benefits always were … dubious at best.

            7 votes
      2. Moonchild
        Link Parent
        Next time, you can open the inspector (ctrl+shift+i) and go to the network tab, and it'll tell you exactly what it's requesting and from where. (May need to clear cache to get it to actually...

        Next time, you can open the inspector (ctrl+shift+i) and go to the network tab, and it'll tell you exactly what it's requesting and from where.

        (May need to clear cache to get it to actually perform the request.)

        5 votes
  2. Pistos
    Link
    Any browser extensions that might do this? Try in an Incognito window. When I make a local .html file and open it (in Chromium), the Network tab only reports loading the one file, as expected.

    Any browser extensions that might do this? Try in an Incognito window.

    When I make a local .html file and open it (in Chromium), the Network tab only reports loading the one file, as expected.

    3 votes