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Trackers

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Trackers

#141

Post by intrasight »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #15

Believe it or not, some stores sympathise with you. They might actually be run by people like you, people who read your story. They still want to know how you proceed round the store, because that helps them optimise shelf layout, identify hard-to-find items, and so on. So yes, they might use the standard in-store CCTV to observe your journeys, and when they figure that you and people like you always have difficulty…

I assume that if you change the file names of those internal analytics tools then they will stop being blocked.

Re: Trackers

#142

Post by jacquesm »

Borating wrote: post #134
jacquesm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Added a link at the end of the article, it looks like your project is free and clean as far as I can see.

Also consider pi-hole [1], notrack [2], uMatrix [3], dnsgate [4] and hostsblock [5] [1] https://pi-hole.net/ [2] https://github.com/quidsup/notrack [3] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix [4] https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate [5] https://gaenserich.github.io/hostsblock/

All added, thank you.

Re: Trackers

#143

Post by Melk »

Majestic121 wrote: post #97
sdoering wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the "good ol' days" (TM the shop-owners in a community knew quite a lot about their customers. Oh Mary just gave birth, Henry is currently sick, Walter likes his coffee a little stronger, James a little weaker (something with his stomach). Danielle drinks only tee, has two kids and the marriage is not really happy. And so on. A lot bordered on gossip, a lot was very valid and relevant information. People talked. S…

That's great, if you want personal recommendations. But I do not. I want a choice, the choice to share my data and have personal recommendations, or not share anything and have generic ads. But no one give me that choice, so I have to take it by "hiring the bouncers"

This is the direction we should and, I predict, we will be headed. Personal recommendations and analytics should be optional and opt-in. The EU cookie law is a step in the right direction but the reason it's so clumsy is because cookies for now are opt-out.

The way to get there is to separate the browsing/shopping process from the tracking/recommendations. Instead of bouncers we should have personal shoppers. The majority of people I speak to have no problem with trackers so there is no reason not to make it more transparent where users can choose which data they want to share and for what purpose.

Re: Trackers

#144

Post by ssharp »

mrweasel wrote: post #131
ssharp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, you're not entitled to free content free of tracking either.

True, but we aren't really given much choice either. Even if I buy for a service or buy a product from a company, I'm not going to be excluded from tracking. Amazon isn't going to not data-mine the shit out of my purchases, even though I paid for a product. I do question the value of all that data collection though. Sure it's interesting, but I don't really believe that data collection and analysis at the current sca…

Walmart wouldn't run an ad in GQ highlighting it's clothing section: because the ad isn't going to resonate with the person seeing it.

However, unlike Walmart who would get on the phone with an account executive with Conde Nast (GQ's publisher) and talk through the campaign, most website advertisers and publishers do not have people dedicated to doing 1-1 sales. Publishers want the most money possible per ad unit and advertisers want the most sales possible within a reasonable acquisition cost. To balance those two things out and create value on both sides, ad exchanges and the demand platforms that tie into ad exchanges provide tons of targeting and remarketing opportunities. That allows advertisers to target their most profitable audiences. However, in order to offer all the rich and detailed targeting options, the exchanges and platforms have to know what individuals are doing so they can create personas and profiles of you.

If this happened magically in the magazine industry and magazine ads could be customized to the individual reader, then Walmart might buy some space in GQ if they learned a small portion of GQ readers are actually bargain hunters and shop at Walmart all the time for clothes and only read GQ more for their interviews and cocktail recipes rather than for men's fashion info.

Re: Trackers

#145

Post by jacquesm »

Borating wrote: post #137
jacquesm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That video is brilliant. Thank you. 'Please plug in your phone here, we need to get some data from it' 'Huh?'

See this one [1] from mozilla [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcUOEP7Brc

If that wasn't posted to HN yet you should.

Re: Trackers

#146

Post by fweespee_ch »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #15

Believe it or not, some stores sympathise with you. They might actually be run by people like you, people who read your story. They still want to know how you proceed round the store, because that helps them optimise shelf layout, identify hard-to-find items, and so on. So yes, they might use the standard in-store CCTV to observe your journeys, and when they figure that you and people like you always have difficulty…

> And if this metaphor seems a little obscure, this is why it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik and other such internal analytics tools. Because some of us are trying to do the right thing and your bouncers are still beating us up.

Honestly, we only need a statistically significant sample for a few buckets...so unless uBlock and chums hit ~85% none of this effects me. The same is true for virtually every "good actor" in the space.

You just need to be able to run an A/B test that is statistically accurate + analytics + RUM.

https://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/

~37%

Ad blocking is a reasonable proxy for tracking blocking since they usually go hand in hand. [e.g. uBlock]

Real world, I see ~35% block rates at $DayJob. I don't care about that at all and I'm amazed any "good actor" would given 65% of the population is more than enough for as many statistically accurate samples as you'd need.

So when you say "you are doing the right thing", what isn't included in the above?

Re: Trackers

#147

Post by icebraining »

makeitsuckless wrote: post #34
S4M wrote: post #3

Thank you Jacques for writing how something that would be completely unacceptable in the physical world is deemed perfectly fine online. It has always bothered me. Take for example how the FBI wants to have automatic access to the data in all iphones through a backdoor. Would that be considered OK if they asked lockers makers to make their locks accept a master key so they would be able to enter in anybody's house, s…

It's not "perfectly fine online". In fact, much of it is already illegal in most civilized countries, and has been long before internet was a big thing. However, any attempt to execute and finetune legislation and regulation to explicitly include the online is generally either ridiculed (example: the EU "cookie law", which is actually a "don't track without explicit permission" law) or portrayed as anti-American prot…

I agree that there is plenty of whining by American companies about EU privacy protection laws, but the cookie law was still worthy of ridicule, even for an European like me who quite appreciates the Data Protection Directive. The intention was good, but the implementation was flawed, and predictably so.

Re: Trackers

#148

Post by mindslight »

marincounty wrote: post #125
pacala wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, people have been optimizing the eggs location long before the Internet, using the simple art of [anonymous] sampling and statistics. There is absolutely no technical need to track everyone's every move, the ad / surveillance industry is overreaching by a huge margin. See http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/about-us/nielsen-families.html for an example of sampling in action. Furthermore, the eggs are hidde…

They have been doing it for a long time, but we know the game now. Most people haven't figured out they are being digitally tracked, but when that happens, I have a feeling consumers will get proactive, and really begin to withhold, or make it difficult for entities to track buying habits. As to eggs in the back of the store, yes milk and eggs are always in the back of every store I can recall. We all know the game.…

I made a small purchase in store at Home Depot with a credit card (a bad habit, which I've resolved to do less of [0]). A few weeks later I received an email asking me to review it, to an email address I had used for online ordering. In retrospect, it wasn't so amazing that they'd correlate this information, but that they'd have the audacity to assume I wanted my relationships with them to converge.

It's similar to price checking something on Amazon, not even logged in, and then them spamming you about that item. Your average person is so overloaded and unobservant that these things apparently don't set off their creepy detector.

[0] I started doing so because it's easier to return items, and I try not to keep stock when a store can do that for me. Speaking of returns, they run your license with a 3rd party verification company that is obviously also surveilling you. Furthermore, if this company's digital voyeurs decide you should no longer be able to return items, you have little recourse. I believe using a credit card avoids them wanting to see ID [1], and obviously prevents their system from denying your return.

[1] Although I've got my license's serial number / 3D barcode covered with blackened masking tape. A picture, name, address, and birthday is more than enough to "identify" me for civilian purposes, thank you very much.

Re: Trackers

#149

Post by Kristine1975 »

Borating wrote: post #137
jacquesm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That video is brilliant. Thank you. 'Please plug in your phone here, we need to get some data from it' 'Huh?'

See this one [1] from mozilla [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcUOEP7Brc

Well-made video. Although hosting it on Youtube (Google) is somewhat ironic.

Re: Trackers

#150

Post by flycaliguy »

terryf wrote: post #133

I find it interesting that for most people the problem with ads is the tracking part. For me it's the ads themselves - I don't like seeing them, because I don't really want to buy stuff and think that a large part of the first world's problems (obesity, depression) are caused in part by ads. In the world of ads, I'm constantly reminded that I don't have the perfect body and that my blender does not look as good as th…

Your nice place will probably never happen. There are alternatives.

On the internet, you are actually better off allowing sites to make money with these old fashioned banner style ads. The alternative on the web is baking this predatory persuasion into the content itself.

By blocking ads, you are pushing your enemy deeper into the medium. Deeper into the story selection process, deeper into the layout decisions, deeper into an app's data harvesting, deeper into the entire editorial philosophy of a publication.

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