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Also, what's with referring to ETags as a "theoretical technique never before seen in the wild"? It's pretty friggin standard.
The article focuses mostly on legal measures (e.g. lawsuits, regulation), but my guess is that those would only deter the largest companies. What I'm more worried about is why 'incognito' modes in current browsers don't appear to stymie this tracking, and how likely it is that that can be fixed.
I, too, would be rather surprised that incognito/private-browsing would share cached data (and thus ETags as sent on If-None-Match requests) with normal browsing. Looking at the researchers' paper... http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1898390 ...it's not clear that's what they're claiming. One quote is that "Even in private browsing mode, ETags can track the user during a browser session." That sugges…
There is nothing more evil in modern business than marketers. Between real life experience and MBA classes I have come to despise most everything involved in modern marketing, especially in the technology space.
Except for that virtually every single one of the biggest problems we face is a marketing problem, rather than an issue where we don't have the science or technology: global warming, education reform, prison reform, the national debt, healthcare, literacy, food production, biodiversity, etc. Marketing is probably the single most important career there is right now, and if there's any hope of humanity making it throug…
It seems their method relies on using cached javascript files to identify a user. How then are they able to track the same user using a different browser? Is it by IP address?
I tried to do my best figuring out what this cunning new method is, but the article seems to have no information. Is it just that it's using my browser's ETags cache? Also, what's with referring to ETags as a "theoretical technique never before seen in the wild"? It's pretty friggin standard.
Then the visitor's browser sends the Etag back to the server (in an "If-None-Match" header), and thus it acts as a quasi-cookie.
There is nothing more evil in modern business than marketers. Between real life experience and MBA classes I have come to despise most everything involved in modern marketing, especially in the technology space.
Except for that virtually every single one of the biggest problems we face is a marketing problem, rather than an issue where we don't have the science or technology: global warming, education reform, prison reform, the national debt, healthcare, literacy, food production, biodiversity, etc. Marketing is probably the single most important career there is right now, and if there's any hope of humanity making it throug…
Interesting point, and I agree.
> if there's any hope of humanity making it through the next thousand years then it'll almost certainly be due to improvements in our ability to market things rather than new technology.
If by our ability you mean progressives/the left, then I agree. Surely marketing per se is at best a neutral force.
There is nothing more evil in modern business than marketers. Between real life experience and MBA classes I have come to despise most everything involved in modern marketing, especially in the technology space.
This isn't evil marketers hiding in their underground lair. This is web developers, designers, and product managers gaining insight about their users. They don't package this information and sell it wholesale to advertisers. They use it to make the product better.
You are taking this -way- too seriously. The ability to have perfect information on how users interact with your product is one the earth-shattering advantages we have as makers in the digital world. It means we can make something people want - better and faster than ever before.
I'm not saying that all use of tracking is good. All power can be used for good and for evil. But that doesn't mean that power is implictly evil. Save your rage for when you discover someone actually being evil.
> So if a user came to Hulu.com from an ad on Facebook, and then later, using a different browser on the same computer , visited Hulu.com from Google, and then at some point signed up for the premium service, KISSmetrics would be able to tell Hulu all about that user’s path to purchase (without knowing who that person was). It seems their method relies on using cached javascript files to identify a user. How then are…