Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

Post by wopian » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

dijksterhuis wrote: post #36

MrAlex94 wrote: post #5

So I have read this report, but it would be good if there were some example URLs of where this is happening. Take for instance Lambeth's website ( https://www.lambeth.gov.uk ). I've browsed through a few public facing pages and the council tax payment pages. The report says Lambeth shows 1 real time bidding, 1 social and 5 Google "trackers". From my network requests I see: -> Google Translate and its resources (CSS e…

I'm getting these additional requests. They're being blocked, so result in a warning message in the console. Didn't see anything in network requests for them. - https://static.hotjar.com/c/hotjar-1043047.js?sv=5 - https://cse.google.com/adsense/search/async-ads.js - https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js Also, the site is setting a cookie even though I've not consented. EDIT: Also, one of the lambeth.gov js s…

Post by dboreham » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

mpeg wrote: post #46

rtb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they understand it fine. As you say, the website is using Google's ad server. So it is sending detailed identifying info about each user to Google. Just because that has become normal for "the online ad ecosystem" over the past few years doesn't mean that it should be acceptable or that we cannot try to stop it.

What is the alternative here? Should Enfield spend tax payer money creating an alternative tool to show banner ad cross-promotions and re-training their teams? Where do you stop? Is Google Analytics evil too? What about Twitter feeds?

Post by rtb » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

mpeg wrote: post #46

rtb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they understand it fine. As you say, the website is using Google's ad server. So it is sending detailed identifying info about each user to Google. Just because that has become normal for "the online ad ecosystem" over the past few years doesn't mean that it should be acceptable or that we cannot try to stop it.

What is the alternative here? Should Enfield spend tax payer money creating an alternative tool to show banner ad cross-promotions and re-training their teams? Where do you stop? Is Google Analytics evil too? What about Twitter feeds?

Post by chriswarbo » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

mpeg wrote: post #46

rtb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they understand it fine. As you say, the website is using Google's ad server. So it is sending detailed identifying info about each user to Google. Just because that has become normal for "the online ad ecosystem" over the past few years doesn't mean that it should be acceptable or that we cannot try to stop it.

What is the alternative here? Should Enfield spend tax payer money creating an alternative tool to show banner ad cross-promotions and re-training their teams? Where do you stop? Is Google Analytics evil too? What about Twitter feeds?

Post by Nursie » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #56

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be hardly news to you; but it is to me. --- I've just taken a look around my local councils site. I've gone onto the benefits pages, the disability pages, and a few random pages. There are literally zero trackers here. I have a first party cookie set to the value "1". All images and JS are served first party, with the exception of typekit (adobe) fonts. All images and JS are, without a deep dive, benign. https…

Pretty hard core to invent a whole local government for test purposes..