Ad tracking is out of control
Not all these domains are associated with ad tracking, per se. A number of these are associated with analytics, including our in-app tutorials and general stats like operating system, preview option usage, language, or region - pretty standard stuff.
Autodesk's list of products is quite large, and many of our products (for example, Inventor and Fusion 360) may share analytics systems in one component, and different ones in others. This is to say that seemingly-redundant tracking is likely the result of different product teams needing to track different metrics or integrate with different systems.
Next, even if you are subscribed to Fusion 360, there are additional features available for payment within the application, such as Manufacturing extensions. Knowing the conversion rate of these offerings (you could call them "ads") helps us determine whether to adjust messaging or pricing based on things like bounce or click rate. In the end, that anonymous data is available only to us, and consumed only by us.
As I type this, I am watching my own traffic while using Fusion 360, and while I see a couple domains referenced in your post, I would say 75% of these domains (Facebook, Bing, LinkedIn, DoubleClick, to name a few) are not present in my decoded traffic streams. If there is a specific command or feature you can associate with these calls, please let me know and I can investigate further. My guess is that, because Fusion contains an embedded web browser that sometimes pulls in external websites, some of what you're seeing could be any combination of Autodesk.com, McMaster Carr, or another external domain being accessed through the Fusion 360 client.
To @wmhazzard's question of blocking these - sure, you could probably block a number of these in a firewall or other web debugger. But as Fusion 360 is inherently cloud-based, this may impact the client's basic functions, such as loading the Data Panel, switching Team Hubs, triggering a cloud solve or render, and probably a few other unintended side effects.
Ultimately, users can always opt out of these programs by going to Preferences > Data Collection and Use > and unchecking those boxes. If there is still traffic you suspect may be tracking you after doing this and restarting, please let us know.
Lance Carocci
Fusion QA for UI Framework/Cloud Workflows, and fervent cat enthusiast
