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Who wants to be tracked?

quantable.com

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Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#81

Post by seri4l »

throwaway71271 wrote: post #70
seri4l wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

you dont need to get the original ip back, just need to know how many unique ips are there, so sha(ip) is good enough

I apologize for the double negative. What I meant is that hashing doesn't improve privacy because if you know the hash and the hashing function it's easy to build a hashmap of all the possible IPv4s (around 3.5B). Unless the hash uses some sort of expensive key derivation function, but that doesn't scale.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#82

Post by rcgs »

It still feels like these dialogues are really only something lawyers could think is a good solution to companies employing invasive/overbearing uses of customer data.

My gut feel is that most users don't understand what "tracking" really means and simply want to enjoy digital experiences without having to engage with the "what & how" that comes with modern platforms. My partner (and I reckon many other "normal" people) loves the ads on Instagram and enjoys the personalisation on YouTube & Netflix.

The current solution of "be transparent and it's okay" just forces decisions onto consumers that they do not want. The "good" solution outlined in this article (accept/reject) is a big yes or a big no – a green light for everything vs a red light for nothing.

There needs to be further regulation in this space that defines legal vs illegal uses of user data beyond the principals laid out in GDPR. The regulation should aim to define the "what & how", relieving the burden of choice from users and removing this "consent and it's okay" loophole for invasive use of data.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#83

Post by cccbbbaaa »

jruohonen wrote: post #32
Freak_NL wrote: post #24

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.

There's 6 legal basis under GDPR, but that's irrelevant for cookies (or anything that allows you to store or retrieve information on the user's device, really), because they're covered by the older ePrivacy directive. If a cookie is not “strictly necessary”, consent is required.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#84

Post by [deleted] »

seri4l wrote: post #66
pelorat wrote: post #18

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.

[deleted]

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#85

Post by andirk »

seri4l wrote: post #66
pelorat wrote: post #18

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.

?? sha256 the string and you are not going to be able to get back to the original from that output.

Edit: The small amount of IP addresses makes it easy to brute force through all of them.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#87

Post by arp242 »

andirk wrote: post #79
arp242 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it also hurts 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.…

The data is that of "I have a person who likes monkey paws" and then they can sell that to the monkey paw conglomerate. Next thing you know you're getting monkey paws in the mail!

The entire premise of my question is that data is kept private between the two parties (the website owner and the visitor). I don't see how this connects with that at all.

And how do you even get someone's mail address without an extensive internet-wide profile (which, again, isn't what the premise of my question was in the first place)?

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#88

Post by tourmalinetaco »

kmlx wrote: post #37
quickthrower2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>doesn’t scale

Yes it does. Have you never heard of a survey?

>doesn’t work

It absolutely can. For instance, polling via newsletter is rather effective.

>analytics is not spying.

If it contains any personally identifiable information that is not required by law, then yes. Yes it fucking is.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#89

Post by nologic01 »

the consent charade is a constant reminder that the modern digital economy is based on large scale deceit and is therefore fundamentally unstable.

yet nothing is done about it, as if it is not important, as if digital tech is not the main, if not only, "driver of future economic growth".

you cannot build a stable economy (well at least not of a democratic, free market kind) relying on complete ignorance and regulatory capture.

anybody who has leverage on the matter and is not doing something about it is complicit in a gigantic, generational level misallocation of resources that will eventually have to be written of.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#90

Post by arendtio »

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…

How about tracking the users pulse while he reads your website via his smartwatch. Wouldn't that give you even more insights into the emotional journey?

My point is: You have to draw the line somewhere (and I think the GDPR line is very reasonable). If you are a business relying on having a perfect website, you can use other means like UX labs.

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