61–70 of 273 posts
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…
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…
This is similar to law enforcement saying: "You mean we cannot track everything you say and do. How in the world are we supposed to do our jobs safely and efficiently?" Answer is, you basically can't. Not safely and not (as) efficiently. Because the world will turn dystopian and will destroy the very thing we are trying to create/maintain. (Happiness, etc) It's nice to be able to A/B test your blog or product. It's c…
You can set your browser to not store cookies at all.
Or to discard cookies when you close it.
Or you can delete cookies whenever you feel like.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Choose the most disruptive, asinine way to comply with them. Then argue that the regulation is at fault, and lobby to have it removed.
For example, there's been plans recently in Norway to tax the salmon farming industry more heavily. The response from the industry has been to pretend that this will completely decimate the industry(we'll have to fire tons of folks to protect our massive profit margins hurr durr), which the numbers don't seem to bear that out. But now they've managed to convince the workers and they've been protesting to "protect their jobs" when they're actually just being used as pawns to protect a billionaire from taxes.
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…
The last thing a browser wants to do is break experience for older sites. If a site relies on 3rd party cookies for log in, it will no longer work on your browser. It makes your browser look shit. Same reason we allow unclosed tags, crossed tags, etc.
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?
How would that work? I can't think of any approach where getting the original IP back from the hash isn't trivial.
Is there a browser extension to turn these off?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's easy: to improve the service.
This is the generic reason that is always given, but I don't think I've ever seen exactly how the service will be improved and why cookies (or any uniquely-identifying data) are the only way to achieve the desired outcomes.
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…
This is similar to law enforcement saying: "You mean we cannot track everything you say and do. How in the world are we supposed to do our jobs safely and efficiently?" Answer is, you basically can't. Not safely and not (as) efficiently. Because the world will turn dystopian and will destroy the very thing we are trying to create/maintain. (Happiness, etc) It's nice to be able to A/B test your blog or product. It's c…
How is simple analytics or A/B testing that's NOT internet-wide tracking (that is, only for the website you're on) or sold (which would be outright illegal without explicit consent) hurting you? Genuine question, because I don't see it. Internet-wide tracking across many sites: sure. But that's a very different thing – it's the difference between "I'm home Darling, I saw Sander at the mall today" vs. "Hello everyone, here is everything Sander did this week".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
>hash the IP-address How would that work? I can't think of any approach where getting the original IP back from the hash isn't trivial.