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Who wants to be tracked?

quantable.com

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Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#171

Post by eternalban »

pornel wrote: post #133
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #12

Better question here is, why is this not handled through the browser instead of relying on individual web apps to do it. Block third party cookies by default, delete other cookies on the last tab or window closed and prompt user to save cookies on a form submit ("do not delete cookies for this domain when leaving" type of prompt, for pages with logins, settings, etc). Also remove features that make easy fingerprintin…

We had P3P spec for it 20 years ago, even implemented in IE! And Google has been sending intentionally malformed P3P header to bypass it. Their trillion dollar business relies on users having difficulty stopping tracking.

TIL. Here is the relevant summary from the spec: https://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/#goals_and_capabs

(for amusement, google P3P and see what comes up first.)

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#172

Post by RajT88 »

JohnFen wrote: post #154
arendtio wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I think it was Microsoft who killed the DNT header by enabling it by default.

Enabling it by default was objectively the right thing to do. Blaming Microsoft for its death is, in my opinion, incorrect. The ad companies were never going to allow it to be honored. The thing that killed DNT was making honoring it optional in the first place.

Blaming Microsoft for enabling a user-focused feature by default is a really weird thing to ding them for in the first place.

Especially given all the things you can rightly blame them for.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#173

Post by jhpacker »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #47

94% of people want me to be president. Caveat: I did not define what it means for them to want me to be president. In other words, what does it mean to be "tracked"? How was the question worded? You can change this value from 1% all the way up to 99% depending on how you ask the question, because "being tracked" is open to interpretation. Truly a useless poll.

Hi, the exact wording on the poll was "If given the option, I would prefer not to be tracked online."

The reason why I didn't define "tracked" for the people taking the poll is that I think that's the most representative way to replicate the question that consent boxes are theoretical asking, but in an abstract way out of the context of a specific website. When a user sees that consent box, they have little to no idea of what tracking is actually happening.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#176

Post by jhpacker »

charcircuit wrote: post #75

This is a misleading statistic. Most people will not care if I implemented a view counter on my website that uses a cookie to prevent the same user as counting as multiple views.

I agree that most people would not mind that scenario, the issue is that that scenario requires the same consent box that the most invasive adtech would use and it's far too onerous on the user as things are now to discern the difference.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#177

Post by todd8 »

My spouse will sometimes mention in conversation with others that I invented the cookie. This always puts me on the spot, and I have to enter into a long explanation of the what and the why of cookies least they believe that I some sort of evil software hacker. (Now for a short explanation so that HN readers don’t think that I’m an evil hacker: I invented them, with the help of a colleague, while at IBM where we were designing a distributed file system. This was before the advent of the World Wide Web.)

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#178

Post by jhpacker »

titzer wrote: post #138

FTA: > “We value your privacy…” There's a special place in hell for the originators of this Orwellian triple-speak. Three meanings overlapped: meant to give users the impression that "we respect your privacy" or "we protect your privacy"--but it doesn't say that. It says they value your privacy, which is literally true; they're happy to put a dollar amount on it and sell or mine it, because it's of value to them . Th…

This is a great way to unpack that phrase, thank you! I started the article with that phrase because of the insincere absurdity of it exactly as you describe.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#179

Post by AbsoluteCabbage »

todd8 wrote: post #177

My spouse will sometimes mention in conversation with others that I invented the cookie. This always puts me on the spot, and I have to enter into a long explanation of the what and the why of cookies least they believe that I some sort of evil software hacker. (Now for a short explanation so that HN readers don’t think that I’m an evil hacker: I invented them, with the help of a colleague, while at IBM where we were…

There are likely dozens of others out there that can lay claim to the same. What specifically do you define as the innovation behind this “invention”?

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#180

Post by novok »

mediascreen wrote: post #118
SanderNL wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the feeling. But to make things very simple, it's again like law enforcement tracking everything you say and do. Let's say it's a single agency, with a single employee doing the tracking to keep it easy. How is that hurting you? How is your every movement being tracked by a single agency such an issue? They said they would keep it private, pinky promise.

Law enforcement tracking everyone can have serious and unintended consequences in away that a SaaS tracking visits are unlikely to have. An extreme case is on the other side, is to compare simple site limited tracking to a coffee shop being able to see who enters the door. Why should they track how I look and the way I'm dressed? Does it make service harder if you have to work blindfolded? Though luck, my privacy is…

On it's face it is harder for baristas to be blindfolded. It would literally be a worse coffee shop at blindfolded baristas than normal coffee.
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