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Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

shapeoftheweb.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

#31

Post by vdaniuk »

vog wrote: post #25
taspeotis wrote: post #18

Mozilla have a Google Analytics Premium account and they try to minimize the information they share [1]. Our Google Analytics premium account is set to opt-out on all of 3rd party uses of the data and the only people who have access to the anonymous aggregated data is Mozilla Employees. This is not the normal Google Analytics setup that most people use on other websites. Also, to increase privacy we flipped the anony…

Why don't they simply analyze the log files on their own, without sharing that data with other companies? For example, running some log files offline through AWstats is not that hard, and the AWstats output is quite good for most purposes.

>AWstats is not that hard, and the AWstats output is quite good for most purposes.

You haven't done any serious web analytics at scale, have you?

Re: Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

#32

Post by userbinator »

UserRights wrote: post #10

When you open a freshly installed Firefox on Ubuntu or Windows (that is where I checked) you will have a google cookie set right before the first usage, without any chance of opting out or being asked before. Yes, anybody can change the startpage, delete all cookies and restart the browser. How many users will do this? And does forcing every user into google surveillance comply with this privacy marketing of mozilla,…

Given how much they've lobotomised the interface over the years, I think it's very unlikely they'll make default such an easily accessible option to delete cookies; quite possibly the only reason some cookie management still remains is because it was there in the first place and the privacy advocates would scream very loudly if it was removed. Otherwise, I think web developers with their "appeal to stupidity" argument ("but it breaks my sites if users are allowed to do X!") have been quite successful at taking control away from the user.

Re: Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

#33

Post by threeseed »

vog wrote: post #25
taspeotis wrote: post #18

Mozilla have a Google Analytics Premium account and they try to minimize the information they share [1]. Our Google Analytics premium account is set to opt-out on all of 3rd party uses of the data and the only people who have access to the anonymous aggregated data is Mozilla Employees. This is not the normal Google Analytics setup that most people use on other websites. Also, to increase privacy we flipped the anony…

Why don't they simply analyze the log files on their own, without sharing that data with other companies? For example, running some log files offline through AWstats is not that hard, and the AWstats output is quite good for most purposes.

This isn't the 90s. AWstats is not a solution for web analytics.

Funnels, Segmentation, Retention, Path Visualisation, Event Tracking.

These are basic features used by marketing teams every day.

And rolling your own solution with something like Hadoop (which would need for Mozilla sized traffic) is a big undertaking.

Re: Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

#34

Post by threeseed »

nodiscpls wrote: post #28
taspeotis wrote: post #18

Mozilla have a Google Analytics Premium account and they try to minimize the information they share [1]. Our Google Analytics premium account is set to opt-out on all of 3rd party uses of the data and the only people who have access to the anonymous aggregated data is Mozilla Employees. This is not the normal Google Analytics setup that most people use on other websites. Also, to increase privacy we flipped the anony…

What sort of analytics do Mozilla actually need?

I could explain it but it's better to look at the websites of MixPanel, Google Analytics and KissMetrics. Those are three leading players for analytics IMHO.

Web analytics for most serious sites are managed by dedicated marketing teams so features are to meet their requirements.

Re: Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

#35

Post by acdha »

vog wrote: post #25
taspeotis wrote: post #18

Mozilla have a Google Analytics Premium account and they try to minimize the information they share [1]. Our Google Analytics premium account is set to opt-out on all of 3rd party uses of the data and the only people who have access to the anonymous aggregated data is Mozilla Employees. This is not the normal Google Analytics setup that most people use on other websites. Also, to increase privacy we flipped the anony…

Why don't they simply analyze the log files on their own, without sharing that data with other companies? For example, running some log files offline through AWstats is not that hard, and the AWstats output is quite good for most purposes.

Have you considered the volume that Mozilla's web properties see? AWstats is fine for a small site with very modest reporting needs but a site at Mozilla's scale would need a lot more infrastructure. If it's not a core service, it's unsurprising that they'd want to outsource it rather than hiring a team to run dozens of new servers.

Re: Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

#36

Post by threeseed »

kuschku wrote: post #2

This is completely inacceptable. Preaching water and drinking wine, eh? If they’d really want some kind of tracking, they could have used a locally installed system like piwik, as the largest issue with tracking comes when the data from many sites is combined.

Sure. They could've done that. But that would cost how much to install, manage and configure remembering that (a) Mozilla gets quite a bit of traffic and (b) that is money that could be better spent on their products.

Re: Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

#37

Post by threeseed »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #29
donohoe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such melodrama. As we speak police vans are en route to round up visitors to that Mozilla page, in co-ordination with Google's security division...

Such strawman, very shill, wow. The information google gathers will never go away. If google collapses, that data will be slurped up by governments and the private sector alike, and there's absolutely no way for you to predict how it will be used in 40 years time. The optimum strategy is to never let them get an ounce of information about you.

And how is it different if Mozilla were to run their own stack ?

Or are you suggesting that they should do no analytics at all.

Re: Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

#38

Post by robin_reala »

UserRights wrote: post #10

When you open a freshly installed Firefox on Ubuntu or Windows (that is where I checked) you will have a google cookie set right before the first usage, without any chance of opting out or being asked before. Yes, anybody can change the startpage, delete all cookies and restart the browser. How many users will do this? And does forcing every user into google surveillance comply with this privacy marketing of mozilla,…

Is this due to the Safe Browsing database? http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/02/28/the-google-cookie-tha...

If so then it shouldn’t be present in current versions. Did you accidentally import cookies from another browser? Probably worth filing a bug if not.

Re: Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

#39

Post by eternalban »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #29
donohoe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such melodrama. As we speak police vans are en route to round up visitors to that Mozilla page, in co-ordination with Google's security division...

Such strawman, very shill, wow. The information google gathers will never go away. If google collapses, that data will be slurped up by governments and the private sector alike, and there's absolutely no way for you to predict how it will be used in 40 years time. The optimum strategy is to never let them get an ounce of information about you.

You make excellent points. This problem needs to be addressed in the political space.

Re: Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

#40

Post by [deleted] »

robin_reala wrote: post #38
UserRights wrote: post #10

When you open a freshly installed Firefox on Ubuntu or Windows (that is where I checked) you will have a google cookie set right before the first usage, without any chance of opting out or being asked before. Yes, anybody can change the startpage, delete all cookies and restart the browser. How many users will do this? And does forcing every user into google surveillance comply with this privacy marketing of mozilla,…

Is this due to the Safe Browsing database? http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/02/28/the-google-cookie-tha... If so then it shouldn’t be present in current versions. Did you accidentally import cookies from another browser? Probably worth filing a bug if not.

[deleted]
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