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Who wants to be tracked?

quantable.com

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Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#31

Post by Ciantic »

Freak_NL wrote: post #24
s1k3s wrote: post #6

I don't know how the experience is in US, but in EU it's because GDPR is a complete failure of a law which doesn't actually solve any problem.

The GDPR is on the whole a very successful law which has improved the way companies handle personal data a great deal. What you are objecting to is specifically the part of that law which mandates consent for gathering personal data, and which resulted in these cookie banners. That's annoying (mostly because a lot of media companies rather continue hovering up data instead of critically assessing the need to do so),…

Also the Cookie Banners work, I have installed multiple, and Google Analytics has become completly useless. We now see from stats that only ~20% people accept Google Analytics tracking. This has lead to new market of trackers that doesn't require banners, for instance based on User agent and IP hashing from logs.

What is unfortunate that law puts the onus on implementing the dialog for individual sites, it should be feature of browsers. This way users could enforce from browser settings that they don't want to be tracked.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#32

Post by jruohonen »

Freak_NL wrote: post #24
s1k3s wrote: post #6

I don't know how the experience is in US, but in EU it's because GDPR is a complete failure of a law which doesn't actually solve any problem.

The GDPR is on the whole a very successful law which has improved the way companies handle personal data a great deal. What you are objecting to is specifically the part of that law which mandates consent for gathering personal data, and which resulted in these cookie banners. That's annoying (mostly because a lot of media companies rather continue hovering up data instead of critically assessing the need to do so),…

Consent is only one way for obtaining a legal basis under the GDPR.

And the consent banners are industry's own inventions. They could have honored do-not-track and be done with it. Instead, they opted for these dark patterns.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#33

Post by quickthrower2 »

TekMol wrote: post #15

I have switched one of my sites to cookieless analytics and it is bad for everybody. I can't even say how many users this site has now. It could be the same user coming back over and over. Or many users. How would I know. Yes, I could track a ton of stats about every pageview like user agent, screen resolution etc and then try to stitch it back together. Trying to figure out how many different users there are. But th…

My violin is probably small-medium sized for this problem.

You can talk to your users in person and ask them, or poll them via email. Do usability tests etc. I guess it just costs more.

Other industries have to do this, they can't just default-spy on their customers.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#34

Post by kmlx »

pelorat wrote: post #18
TekMol wrote: post #15

I have switched one of my sites to cookieless analytics and it is bad for everybody. I can't even say how many users this site has now. It could be the same user coming back over and over. Or many users. How would I know. Yes, I could track a ton of stats about every pageview like user agent, screen resolution etc and then try to stitch it back together. Trying to figure out how many different users there are. But th…

Why would you need to know anything but hits/month and ad-revenue/month? Why don't you just hash the IP-address and count unique users that way?

that's easy: to improve the service.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#35

Post by jruohonen »

eska wrote: post #25
newswasboring wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR is the law which at least gave us these prompts. Before that there was no rules for consent, they would just track you.

There was a law just for cookies before. And no, companies don’t need to put up these prompts, IF they don’t do any UNNECESSARY tracking.

Cookies belong to the e-privacy directive.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#36

Post by hourago »

Gys wrote: post #19

Because they also want everything for free.

> Because they also want everything for free.

Maybe people just goes to the cheaper option available because increasing inequality has left millions with no disposable income.

This is the same logic by which people prefers cheap furniture instead of high quality one. It is not a preference for cheap but it is just what they can afford, if they had more money most people will get the higher quality version and pay the price.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#37

Post by kmlx »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #33
TekMol wrote: post #15

I have switched one of my sites to cookieless analytics and it is bad for everybody. I can't even say how many users this site has now. It could be the same user coming back over and over. Or many users. How would I know. Yes, I could track a ton of stats about every pageview like user agent, screen resolution etc and then try to stitch it back together. Trying to figure out how many different users there are. But th…

My violin is probably small-medium sized for this problem. You can talk to your users in person and ask them, or poll them via email. Do usability tests etc. I guess it just costs more. Other industries have to do this, they can't just default-spy on their customers.

> You can talk to your users in person and ask them

doesn't scale.

> poll them via email

doesn't work.

> default-spy on their customers

analytics is not spying.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#38

Post by sergiomattei »

sauercrowd wrote: post #30
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…

I've been thinking about the same thing - this feels like it deserves a native API, so we can get rid of all these dark patterns currently being employed.

It’s there. It’s “Do-Not-Track” and it sadly was never respected by the big platforms (and any developers, really). I’ve never seen a single case where setting the DNT header made a difference — which is dumb considering how infested the web is with privacy prompts…

Server owners can track you with the data they collect, client side can have little control of that. I wonder if there’s a better way possible in the current iteration of the web platform, or if a substantial overhaul is necessary for privacy respecting services.

Perhaps DNT would’ve been more effective if it was written in law? To gather user information for marketing purposes, you must respect this header. But then, how’d you enforce that… other problems: if browsers always set DNT to true by default, then the whole effort is pointless, because nobody will opt-in. This is ideal, but marketers will definitely not like that idea. Thinking out loud here.

EDIT: found an interesting HN thread from 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14377877

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#39

Post by mvdtnz »

pelorat wrote: post #18
TekMol wrote: post #15

I have switched one of my sites to cookieless analytics and it is bad for everybody. I can't even say how many users this site has now. It could be the same user coming back over and over. Or many users. How would I know. Yes, I could track a ton of stats about every pageview like user agent, screen resolution etc and then try to stitch it back together. Trying to figure out how many different users there are. But th…

Why would you need to know anything but hits/month and ad-revenue/month? Why don't you just hash the IP-address and count unique users that way?

He gave several valid examples in the comment you're replying to.
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