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Web Analytics Illegal in UK after 26 May? Crazy

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Re: Web Analytics Illegal in UK after 26 May? Crazy

#101

Post by jasomill »

mwexler wrote: post #32
uggedal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get user-based statistics without cookies with: (new Image()).src="http://your.tld/track.png?ua=" + encodeURIComponent(navigator.userAgent); and then parse your logs. Update: this is just an example, as ars notes the user agent is sent as a HTTP header. But screen resolution etc is not.

Look, there are tons of data available in the browser, see http://panopticlick.eff.org/ for a good example. But they are non-stable for reasons outside of the user's control. So, if a user wants to kill her cookies every day, cool, they can. They can't randomly change their useragent+screen-resolution on a daily basis with the same ease. In addition, UA changes outside of user's control (a browser update pushed on th…

Well, having made no special effort, the site claims my User-Agent is as unique as my set of 5,150 installed fonts. To be fair, I suppose WebKit nightly version numbers don't satisfy most definitions of "random".

As for mechanisms, to what end, if nobody bothers to use them? Especially things like "randomize User-Agent string" that'd break a great many "non-evil" sites?

Re: Web Analytics Illegal in UK after 26 May? Crazy

#102

Post by justincormack »

scanr wrote: post #97
justincormack wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook probably will continue to collect data from Like buttons as it is the site owner not them who has to get consent...

It's a good point but the wording in the guidelines suggests that both the 3rd party and the site operator share responsibility to get consent (ignoring the fact that Facebook may just sidestep this, being a US based company): "The person setting the cookie is therefore primarily responsible for compliance with the requirements of the law." and "Where third party cookies are set through a website both parties will ha…

I guess as Facebook deliberately designs the Like button to track this makes sense. Although maybe it will be ok as it will only track Facebook users, who will presumably have consented.

Facebook is legally an Irish company in Europe so cannot ignore this.

Re: Web Analytics Illegal in UK after 26 May? Crazy

#103

Post by mwexler »

jasomill wrote: post #101
mwexler wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, there are tons of data available in the browser, see http://panopticlick.eff.org/ for a good example. But they are non-stable for reasons outside of the user's control. So, if a user wants to kill her cookies every day, cool, they can. They can't randomly change their useragent+screen-resolution on a daily basis with the same ease. In addition, UA changes outside of user's control (a browser update pushed on th…

Well, having made no special effort, the site claims my User-Agent is as unique as my set of 5,150 installed fonts. To be fair, I suppose WebKit nightly version numbers don't satisfy most definitions of "random". As for mechanisms, to what end, if nobody bothers to use them? Especially things like "randomize User-Agent string" that'd break a great many "non-evil" sites?

Looks like someone made a "randomize user-agent" for Chrome: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3880536
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