Some people seem to think cookies and tracking scripts are there to collect data and sell it, spy on you and whatnot…
But most companies I’ve worked with just use it to improve their business metrics, conversion rates, attribution, and make smarter business decisions.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t track less or at all, but a lot of that activity is mundane and mostly harmless.
If and only if none other has access to the data?
Not really. Some things you can track with server side statistics but this is extremely limited and you cannot assure that something you see in the statistics is because of xy in the frontend
In my opinion the main problem with front-end site tracking is, that browsers or scripts do fingerprinting. If you use many extensions, and you don't fall to the generic user group, then your data could be uniquely assigned to you.
If there is a company, that has a script that everyone uses, he will exactly know which sites you use... If he also has a website, where you created an account, then he can directly attribute everything back to you.
I aggree that some usage statistics are not that harmful, but context matters so much.
Like said above, you think about the usage statistics, but the company might care more about your visited sites....
"Only the paranoid survive."
— Harold Finch, Person of Interest
This is why I'm a big fan of platforms like Matomo. lets you collect important business information like you mentioned above and also anonymize the collected data.
I’ve never seen anyone look at any IP addresses or care about any personal data. It’s always looked at in aggregate.
Thats fair. I've never worked at a large company that's done metrics tracking. This is just for my own personal stuff and the clients that I have.
I guess the question is not if they do it, but if it is possible to be done.
Murphy's law usually holds.
Maybe, but it's not useful. Businesses are not going to go out of their way to associate some behavior of yours to your IP if there's no name. There's zero reason to do this.
Even in ecommerce where you provide your name and address, companies never really look at that information other than for support tickets. All of the marketing is automated and insights come from aggregate data. Nobody actually knows or cares about you or what you buy.
My problem is not inherently the company setting up tracking.
It is rather the company providing tracking, the hacker who can steal information from websites, etc.
I mean of course, I could be afraid dieing as well. So my reasoning here is not be afraid of everything, but knowing the trafeoffs.
There is no best solution, only different tradeoffs.
Also I think e.g. google analytics is free.
But I guess the creation, maintanance and hosting of this service is not.
I can't imagine that they don't try to make money of it.
by "improving their business metrics .." they are mostly using Google and co. Implicitly feeding the big cookie monster is not very harmless IMO.
This is only a problem when you give google some user data. Most apps are only collecting data like app logs. Klick events and general statistics of how the app is used.
Saving this data isn’t a problem and it doesn’t matter where you store the data. Most backend systems are running on AWS, Azure or Google anyway.
I can fully understand when people using a app and then find out that there are some libraries in the app like google analytics for example, but it really isn’t that much of a deal.
What about fingerprinting?
Google does not necessarly need submitted user data for tracking. They are pretty good at working with your meta data.
Can be done with such libraries sure, but it can also be done from the backend server.
Just because some tracking libraries are onboard doesn’t mean that you are tracking as individual.
The other case is also possible. Just because there is no tracking library doesn’t man the app isn’t tracking you.
Most companies are using thirds party libraries because it’s much cheaper to use and much more convenient.
The problem gets even bigger when it comes to apps.
Without tracking you can’t tell how people using your app. But this is essentially when it comes to UX
A/B-Tests are extremely useful for example
Indeed
The banality of evil
And then there is Google and Facebook ...
What about them? It’s usually used to serve ads. Also looked at in aggregate. The amount of data google processes every second is impossible to do any type of personalized analysis on
Usually doesnt mean they don't also spy on people on behalf of the govt. The twitter files showd us that even though it was guessable before. Apple did it back in the day also if I remember but don't worry it's only for criminals.... but who defines criminal 🤔?
when you say the govt. do you mean NSA? They likely have far more valuable data than cookie sessions and marketing tracking
Everyone is willingly sharing every information on social media
Dans chaque pas forcément NSA je pense même que la Big Tech a toujours été protégée par l'état américain les 5 + Blackrock depuis souvent Obama avec IShare qui gère à leur place dans l'état de Washington.. Grâce à Biden l'EU a pu enfin faire passer des règles au niveau USA mais l'EU fut trop en retard' dans la dépendance numérique et même pour ses rêves d'or.. 'sauf la Norvège était souveraine. Ceci depuis le deal Churchill Roosevelt lors de la 2nde guerre mondiale et le Portagal et la Suisse étaient les gardiens de l' or Nazi. Un monde de merde.. Tout est declassified depuis bientôt 5 ans. pour ceux intéressés idem pour le Vietnam.. Nous restent les dernières guerres depuis Koweït au moins on a vécu qu'une partie sinon il y a Assange ou Snowden et d'autres lanceurs d'alerte de l'ombre.. J'arrête.. Merci Karnage pour cette note
Feds, other sovereign govts were requesting censorship also.... nsa maybe. Can't remember. Way I look at it it may not be critical but reducing any data 'they' have seems appropriate. Also marketing even an aggregate level could be dangerous. Wasn't that the Cambridge Analytica story from a while back.... 2016 maybe.
Ils sont les champions malgré les règles RGPD qu'ils continuent avec leurs équipes judiciaires ce qui fait en France ils ont toujours des amendes qui ne sont qu'une goutte sur leurs chiffres d'affaires. Pour Meta faceb et WhatsApp insta c'est pire il faut rechercher les dernièrs tweets de Frances Haugen et du responsible de Meta une Sainte horreur pour les enfants..
Therein lies the problem. It is not like company decides one day to spy on people’s habits (visited sites, ads clicked, things purchased, etc), it happens gradually and one day the line is crossed. The common question each company asks is, how do we increase our revenue?; what data can we utilize to improve customer retention; what other customer segments can we tap into? This goes on gradually, and one day we are collecting large datasets with a lot of information about customers that can tell the company how to “manipulate” them into more purchases and spendings. I am not saying it is spying, but if that data are used by the government branches to use against individuals, companies are powerless in most cases. 🐶🐾🫡
Indeed! Not the starting incentive matters, but the power it can give...
NgU > savings > privacy > freedom tech!!!
It’s def. a ladder and people get there when they need to 😊
You are already giving them your name and shipping address and email. There's not much more useful information one can give other than cross-site cookie tracking to retarget you for some product upsells or whatnot. But marketing never really looks at individuals, it is always done in bulk and via tools that automate all of that.
I know that, but when you seat on a large dataset of customer’s (individual) data, you can derive and guess a lot of things about them. It’s all about who gets the access to that data. Security is another problem, and who has the access. Companies usually treat security as something they must do, and as part of their culture, as it should be 🐶🐾🫡
Most of bullets that are made end up just hitting a target, but it doesn't make better the problem of a few ones hitting people.
Fonctionnelles oui mais pour le reste non.. avec leurs partenaires commerciaux ou publicitaires non merci 🙏💜
J'aime ce genre de thématiques qui nous permettent d'interagir sur nos droits, l'économie et les dessous des cartes des situations géopolitiques et économiques qui ont des retentissements sur nous Tous
Pas de Zap entre nous je suis incapable techniquement de configurer une extension Alby et d'obtenir même un NIP05.. Je peux voir des erreurs sur un serveur mais in foutue de configurer un wallet c'est peut-être un blocage cognitif 😂
Most problems stem not from individual sites managing it but using Google’s one which merely aggregates it for Google’s use
The problem isn't cookies themselves, it's cross-site cookies and trackers, like Facebook, Amazon and Google ones, which are commonplace and serve only to collate data on you as an individual
