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Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

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

#91

Post by vdaniuk »

cbd1984 wrote: post #90
vdaniuk wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, am I? Has anyone offended by this "transgression" of privacy by Mozilla thought this through to its logical conclusion? Let's see. 1. Mozilla is one of the good, independent orgs that don't have profit as their main goal. They do fight for the interests of the community at large. 2. If they remove third-party analytics from their web properties, Mozilla instantly loses valuable actionable insights that significa…

> Mozilla is one of the good, independent orgs So they say, but their actions, here, put them in with Google. > If they remove third-party analytics from their web properties, Mozilla instantly loses valuable actionable insights that significantly increase their efficiency as an organization. I disagree, and I fail to see what Mozilla needs from analytics badly enough to require them to partner with Google in such a…

Unless we discuss this issue in terms of cost/benefit analysis of various strategies I don't see a reason to continue this discussion.

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

#92

Post by pdkl95 »

Osmose wrote: post #79
mattmanser wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean this is an honest way, but what actionable insights? Mozilla aren't selling anything on that page. They won't be making key engineering decisions off of the page. Could you detail the gains that they could make that makes the world a better place? That justify any sort of tracking over '300, 000 people viewed this page today' that you can get from your own logs? There is some data that might be occasionally us…

Off the top of my head, based off things we normally look for in our analytics: - See how people get to the privacy page from where they enter the site. Useful to see if some categories are getting more traffic than others, so that we can re-balance if, for example, we think that Privacy is not getting the attention we want it to. - See how long people are staying on this page. What if the writing or infographic don'…

> - See how people get to the privacy page from where they enter the site.

You don't need a 3rd party to learn the order of pages you served to any given client. That one is so simple you only need 'grep' and the server log. (aggregation into whatever statistics you want to learn is a trivial exercise left for the reader)

> - See how long people are staying on this page.

The entire point is that you do not have a right to that information, other than what you can infer from the client later loading another page. Applying technical methods to gain access to private information like this simply makes you the the spy invading people's privacy. Worse, as most people do not understand these technical details, you are a eavesdropper who is preying on ignorance.

> so that users come away with a better understanding of privacy.

...while you simultaneously violate the same user's privacy. Do you seriously not understand that you're making the "We had to destroy the village in order to save it" style of ends-justify-the means argument that ignores how you've started to act like that which you are supposedly fighting against.

> hovering over

Again, the entire point is that you don't get to know that information. That is a perfect example of the type of data the privacy-focused people are trying to protect. We really don't give a damn if that information is useful; if you're recording anything beyond the HTTP requests you receive (the explicit request from the client), then you are the spy and therefore the enemy. If you want to understand how effective your pages are, find another way to deduce that information. This is why traditional businesses pay people to participate in focus groups, to name one example.

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

#93

Post by pdkl95 »

vdaniuk wrote: post #91
cbd1984 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mozilla is one of the good, independent orgs So they say, but their actions, here, put them in with Google. > If they remove third-party analytics from their web properties, Mozilla instantly loses valuable actionable insights that significantly increase their efficiency as an organization. I disagree, and I fail to see what Mozilla needs from analytics badly enough to require them to partner with Google in such a…

Unless we discuss this issue in terms of cost/benefit analysis of various strategies I don't see a reason to continue this discussion.

Unless we discuss this issue in terms of respect for user privacy, the cost/benefit analysis isn't even relevant.9

The fact that something is useful doesn't automagically make it ethical. I'm sure aggregated GA provides a lot of useful information. Our point is that if you are using GA - for any reason - then you're a spy that prioritizes your addiction to analytics over the privacy the people visiting your site.

Unfortunately, given you're posts in this thread, I don't expect you to understand this. Upton Sinclair was very insightful when he said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!".

Have fun inspecting your analytics reports and using that data for another round of page tweaking and tuning; it maybe be more socially acceptable than the Twitter user who continually refreshes their latest post to watch their hit rate increase, but still a sign of addiction.

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

#94

Post by mattmanser »

giovannibajo1 wrote: post #78
mattmanser wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean this is an honest way, but what actionable insights? Mozilla aren't selling anything on that page. They won't be making key engineering decisions off of the page. Could you detail the gains that they could make that makes the world a better place? That justify any sort of tracking over '300, 000 people viewed this page today' that you can get from your own logs? There is some data that might be occasionally us…

I would say that browser usage, demography (country distribution etc.) and navigation paths (bounce rate, funnels, etc.) within the site are all important data points to optimize a non-profit website. I'm not sure anybody can make a point for GA to be life changing for that site, but the opposite is also true (the saving in privacy from visitors is not going to have a game-changing effect). I also think that a pragma…

Browser usage is in the user agent string. Country is in the IP address.

You don't need a third party analytics system for them.

And none of this information will ever be used it is just gathered and sent to a third party.

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

#95

Post by Silhouette »

vdaniuk wrote: post #89
Silhouette wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most obvious alternative is probably Piwik[1], which offers similar basic functionality to regular Google Analytics out of the box, but is also Open Source and highly customisable/extensible via a plugin model. Among the features threeseed mentioned, funnel visualisation is probably the weakest area in the baseline version right now. There have been various plug-ins available to do it for a long time, but it's no…

Piwik is fine open-source software, I won't argue with that. However, it isn't really comparable in advanced features with GA: * advanced funnel analysis, such as multi-channel funnels * attribution models and analysis * advanced visualization and analysis tools * age/gender demographic and interest reports * custom dimension and custom metrics * mobile android/iphone SDK for apps and many other features including co…

Could you give more specifics about what you're looking for here? It's hard to compare meaningfully with only broad terms like "advanced visualization and analysis tools".

It's true that GA claims to offer demographic reporting. The reliability and usefulness of that reporting is a different matter, of course.

Other than that, Piwik might be less capable if you just install a standard baseline and never customize it, but when integrated with a little custom logic it can do some pretty impressive (and, in particular, tailored) analysis and visualization. GA is more the other way around. You have more tools available as standard, but then it has limited scope for useful customisation beyond its built-in toolset (edit: without resorting to building completely bespoke systems via APIs, that is).

For example, I've seen quite simple situations that seem enough to confuse GA's funnel tools. A common one is a non-linear sign-up funnel where some steps may be skipped or changed, or where a visitor may come in part-way through the process. These often happen in practice because of something that visitor has already done before starting to sign up, where they are located, how they choose to pay, or other factors. My experience has been that anything remotely unusual like that immediately seems to confuse GA's entire funnel toolset, rendering it all but useless. With a more flexible tool like Piwik you can generate a custom visualization of the whole process you actually use with a reasonable amount of effort.

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

#96

Post by eternalban »

c0achmcguirk wrote: post #54
eternalban wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Please no. I think the web community can solve problems faster and more efficiently than governments. Remember the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003? Did it solve our spam problem or did your email provider do it?

It is a matter of constitutional law and civil rights, not technology.

> .. "web" ..

This is an issue that is not merely limited to networks, much less simply "web".

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

#97

Post by Sir_Substance »

threeseed wrote: post #37
Sir_Substance wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If everyone on the internet created their own analytics stack, the data integration issues alone would prevent aggregation and abuse in 40 years time.

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

#98

Post by Sir_Substance »

eternalban wrote: post #39
Sir_Substance wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm a big fan of the EU's "right to be forgotten". I never quite got how everyone decided that it was a tool for pedophiles.

If it had been implemented in a robust way that required companies like google to remove all data about you, I'd be making an annual request, on general principals.

Given unlimited political power, I'd probably boil it down to the trifecta of "collecting data about someone, even in anonymised form, constitutes opening an account for them. Accounts are always wholly owned by the person they are about. In the event of multiperson accounts each individual has controlling influence over the account's deletion (see rule three)", "when an account is created the owner or owners must be notified", "upon an account owners request, you must completely delete an account and all associated data, working in good faith to delete it as fast as possible, even if deleting that data will affect other accounts".

It probably needs some refining, but the goal is to punish deliberately obfuscatory system designs where data or account information is deliberately entangled to make data deletion impractical, and give people control final control over the gathering of personal data about them.

Ultimately, I really liked the Gevulot system from the quantum thief (really worth reading, it's an amazing series). It'd be nice to have an internet based version of the same system.

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

#99

Post by gorhill »

Silhouette wrote: post #87
SSLy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uMatrix has been recently released for FF. Basically, it's a better RP https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

That looks similar to existing plug-ins like Policeman. These are great for technically-minded power users who understand the implications, but IMHO they far too complicated for "normal" users who just want a bit of added privacy and security without spending half their lives tweaking configurations.

If you stick to clicking only the hostnames, it's no different than RequestPolicy. Otherwise there is uBlock's dynamic filtering which does essentially the same thing as RequestPolicy:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-de...

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

#100

Post by mattmanser »

vdaniuk wrote: post #81
mattmanser wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean this is an honest way, but what actionable insights? Mozilla aren't selling anything on that page. They won't be making key engineering decisions off of the page. Could you detail the gains that they could make that makes the world a better place? That justify any sort of tracking over '300, 000 people viewed this page today' that you can get from your own logs? There is some data that might be occasionally us…

Sure, I'd love to elaborate on benefits for Mozilla and others that arise from use of GA. The list won't be exhaustive but will provide enough examples. 1. Mozilla launches a new translation initiative for Firefox that is announced on the index page and links to the landing page for the initiative. Google Analytics(GA) allows them to understand the clickthrough rate of the announcement and conversion rate of visitors…

How pathetically weak are all of them? And certainly doesn't need constantly running analytics or even only opt-in.
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