Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

shapeoftheweb.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 103 posts

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

#51

Post by eli »

cbd1984 wrote: post #48
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…

Or so they claim. Is there any way for anyone else to verify that?

That would be a really weird lie for no reason I can imagine.

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

#52

Post by RA_Fisher »

acdha wrote: post #35
vog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They could sample the data and apply inferential statistical methods. Google Analytics does this, too.

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

#53

Post by hobs »

sp332 wrote: post #44
oceanstone wrote: post #23

Mozilla tried to launch a site to help educate people while tracking engagement? This seems like a much bigger issue than the NSA copying entire datastreams from American internet hubs.

I don't get your comment (even sarcastically). It's not that big, but it's still a problem. People who are trying to avoid being tracked would probably prefer not being tracked. The page is self-defeating.

Well I do! Complaining about a moz site having google analytics is 100% bike shedding, everyone has an opinion because they have no idea how to fix or address the bigger issues, so lets complain about a website, we all know how to do that!

If we cannot pick our battles, then we will just lose because of the dissipation of all of our efforts across everything "that is still a problem".

When I weigh out the benefits vs the costs, I dont see why moz would pick any other option, everything else is more work, and google already tracks you across most of the internet.

Whether or not you showed up on a mozilla page is not going to change their understanding of your habits by much.

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

#54

Post by c0achmcguirk »

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.

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?

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

#55

Post by userbinator »

madez wrote: post #49
belorn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can test this theory. Go to nearest movie theater with a camera and a clipboard, and start taking pictures and recording people who goes in to watch a movie. Also, stop people and ask what movie they are going to watch, with a noticeable "hmmm" and "really? You are that kind of person?". If anyone ask why you are doing this, say you will be selling this information to highest bidder, as there is always someone int…

Nice summary of Google. But in their defence, you'd have to add something that is given to the surveiled people, because Google does. It lures. Maybe, free cinema would a good analogy. And when you enter that free Google cinema everything about you will be recorded, analyzed, connected and sold to the highest bidder. Creeeeeeepy

"If you're not paying for it, you're the product being sold."

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

#56

Post by throwaway2048 »

madez wrote: post #49
belorn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can test this theory. Go to nearest movie theater with a camera and a clipboard, and start taking pictures and recording people who goes in to watch a movie. Also, stop people and ask what movie they are going to watch, with a noticeable "hmmm" and "really? You are that kind of person?". If anyone ask why you are doing this, say you will be selling this information to highest bidder, as there is always someone int…

Nice summary of Google. But in their defence, you'd have to add something that is given to the surveiled people, because Google does. It lures. Maybe, free cinema would a good analogy. And when you enter that free Google cinema everything about you will be recorded, analyzed, connected and sold to the highest bidder. Creeeeeeepy

Google analytics isn't giving anything to end users at all, plenty of paid sites use it too for instance.

I find it frankly shocking so many sites use it without any seeming consideration at all, its essentially completely selling out your users for a slick analyitics package.

Where exactly do they suppose such precise and accurate data comes from when they open the management pages.

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

#57

Post by Sir_Substance »

sp332 wrote: post #46
Sir_Substance wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

check out noscript then!

RequestPolicy and other tools like HTTPS Switchboard or even Ghostery let you block all content from certain domains, not just JS. They won't even load a tracking pixel. RP is whitelist-based and it can take some time to enable all the domains you actually use. Ghostery is blacklist-based and targets known tracking domains.

I run Ghostery as well, but I learned something new, never heard of tracking pixels. I've added RequestPolicy to my suite!

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

#58

Post by madez »

userbinator wrote: post #55
madez wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice summary of Google. But in their defence, you'd have to add something that is given to the surveiled people, because Google does. It lures. Maybe, free cinema would a good analogy. And when you enter that free Google cinema everything about you will be recorded, analyzed, connected and sold to the highest bidder. Creeeeeeepy

"If you're not paying for it, you're the product being sold."

That's simply not true, see Gnu or Linux.

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

#59

Post by cbd1984 »

eli wrote: post #51
cbd1984 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or so they claim. Is there any way for anyone else to verify that?

That would be a really weird lie for no reason I can imagine.

The reason is to make it seem like they care about privacy more than they actually do.

Obviously, people care how much they care, hence a reason to lie.

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

#60

Post by lawl »

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…

Or they could just setup Piwik[0] or something like that...

[0] https://piwik.org/

Post reply on HN