Anyone who uses the new website as an entry point to our other projects is being tracked by this service. The request to pixel.wp.com is made even when the Do Not Track header is sent. This domain is in the default block list for popular ad blockers.
I am adding fundraising-backlog because this issue is of extra importance to people who might click the "donate" link on the new site.
Edited to be less speculative
See also T201022: Third party resources loaded by wikimediafoundation.org
| Status | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | None | T201022 Third party resources loaded by wikimediafoundation.org | ||
| Open | None | T201422 Wikimedia Foundation website includes Wordpress tracking pixel |
It looks like there is tracking of all navigation to external sites with this. For example, when I clicked on "Donate Now", the following request was sent:
https://pixel.wp.com/c.gif?s=2&u=https%3A%2F%2Fdonate.wikimedia.org%2F&r=&b=147851870&p=10&rand=0.17689332155574422
This happened despite Do Not Track being enabled (this confirms the behaviour described in the task description).
Setting as high to match T201022: Third party resources loaded by wikimediafoundation.org
Note that wp.com is not a third party here (except in a purely technical sense like commons.wikimedia.org is for en.wikipedia.org), it's hosted by the same entity as the main domain wikimediafoundation.org. See T201022#4544867