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Believe it or not, some stores sympathise with you. They might actually be run by people like you, people who read your story. They still want to know how you

Believe it or not, some stores sympathise with you. They might actually be run by people like you, people who read your story. They still want to know how you proceed round the store, because that helps them optimise shelf layout, identify hard-to-find items, and so on. So yes, they might use the standard in-store CCTV to observe your journeys, and when they figure that you and people like you always have difficulty finding the eggs (seriously - why is it always so hard to find the eggs?), they'll move the eggs somewhere more prominent, so they can sell more eggs and you can buy what you came to buy. But that's as far as it goes. They don't follow you out the store, let alone into your bedroom. They don't match anything with third-party data, let alone your mobile phone number. The store just wants to know where to put the eggs. Unfortunately, your bouncers have simply been told to "hurt them if you have to, I’ve really had enough of it". So last time they came in, they smashed the CCTV cameras. The store-owner remonstrated with them a bit but the whole debate around bouncers has become so polarised that there was really no point arguing. --- And if this metaphor seems a little obscure, this is why it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik and other such internal analytics tools. Because some of us are trying to do the right thing and your bouncers are still beating us up.

jacquesm 11y ago
> They don't follow you out the store This is actually factually incorrect. Some hints here: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/10/automatic_face_.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/10/automatic_fac... And it goes even deeper than that.
- Doctor_Fegg 11y ago
  Self-hosted, same-domain Piwik doesn't track you on other sites, and doesn't pull in any external data sources.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Yes, I got you, I was just pointing out to you that if in-real-life stores are capable of following you out of the store using their CCTV systems there is absolutely no reason to assume that you can't use a website's analytics suite to couple that with other databases at your disposal. The major reason why companies will self host analytics services is not because they are trying to protect the privacy of their visitors, it is because they don't want to give out business critical information to third parties.
adsche 11y ago
A little obscure? :) > hurt them if you have to > they smashed the CCTV cameras What? Nope. Not at all. You can still track everybody without a blocker, can you not? Or what harm do you incur that translates into harm or property damage in your metaphor?
- dhimes 11y ago
  They cry that they are hurt when you block ads. Forbes.com may be the worst of them, but even if I allow ads they block content if I don't allow the trackers. I was going to email them to voice my concern about this, but there wasn't a contact page easily accessible (they really blocked their pages!).
  - kelseydh 11y ago
    I think you make a good point. There is an argument to be made against ad blocking, but it can't be made honestly if they are also requiring tracking technology to also be turned on.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Kliment 11y ago
Unfortunately, the reason the eggs are hidden is that they are a low-margin item and people looking for them will pass more high-margin items on the way and be possibly tempted to buy.
gglitch 11y ago
What is meant by "populist" in this critique?
- matt4077 11y ago
  It means roughly the same as when the term is applied to politicians when they promise lower taxes: A popular measure that actually has detrimental effects in the long term (with the possible connotation that the politician should/does know this and is just exploiting some base emotions).
  - gglitch 11y ago
    Does it not sound solidly, unambiguously sound for the long-term health of the market to increase the ability of consumers to make informed decisions?
- rmc 11y ago
  It's a way make "popular" sound like a bad thing.
davb 11y ago
I find it interesting that a lot of content producers have feel entitled to users' participation in analytics at all. Sure, it may be frustrating when a user blocks tracking tools (especially self hosted ones) but that's the their choice. We got by for decades without analysing user habits (even in a local only context, without correlation with third party data). There are so few examples of cases where analysing user behaviour was a make or break factor in a store's survival. Sure, it can be useful to know what a user looked at and, as you suggest, how difficult it is to find the eggs. But there are better ways. Physical stores at one point (and still now, in many cases) respect that user choice. Want to participate? Get a loyalty card. We'll watch how you spend, but we'll give a little something back to participants. On the web, the solution is simple. Do it on your application servers back end. Have your request handler (which should probably know a lot more about your user in the context of your application than any third party tool) log user requests and actions. You'll be able to tie data gathered to a logged in user and their local purchase or browsing history. You'll get to know your user better and you'll avoid third party tools that creep out a growing proportion of your users. You're not entitled to participation in analytics.
- dhimes 11y ago
  We got by for decades without analysing user habits Depends when you start counting the decades. Since Netscape and the 'coming out' of the www, we've always paid attention to where people go on our own web pages.
  - leereeves 11y ago
    And stores have always paid attention to how many items they sell. But (continuing the metaphor) now they're tracking what each customer buys and when, where they came from and where they go, where their eyes wander and how long they look at an item... Then sharing that data with other stores to profile customers, and find out who's sick, pregnant, graduating, on a diet, what political candidates they support... Tracking today is nothing like tracking site visitors in the '90s.
    - 11y ago
rmc 11y ago
Tough. The advertising industry and tracking has gone too far. The amount of websites with local analytics is small. I suspect that nearly all US based shops with local analytics is breaking (EU) data protection law. Why should I assist them in breaking the law when it harms my privacy?
burkaman 11y ago
Why can't you just ask people for permission first?
pacala 11y ago
Believe it or not, people have been optimizing the eggs location long before the Internet, using the simple art of [anonymous] sampling and statistics. There is absolutely no technical need to track everyone's every move, the ad / surveillance industry is overreaching by a huge margin. See http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/about-us/nielsen-families.html http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/about-us/nielsen-families.html for an example of sampling in action. Furthermore, the eggs are hidden on purpose, such that people have to walk a long way along aisles filled with high margin impulse buy crap. As a customer, this "optimization" is actively trying to exploit my atavic weaknesses and damage my health. Thank you very much, I don't sense a whole lot of sympathy for me here, just a race for the quick and dirty buck.
- marincounty 11y ago
  They have been doing it for a long time, but we know the game now. Most people haven't figured out they are being digitally tracked, but when that happens, I have a feeling consumers will get proactive, and really begin to withhold, or make it difficult for entities to track buying habits. As to eggs in the back of the store, yes milk and eggs are always in the back of every store I can recall. We all know the game. Why piss off your loyal customers? Too many MBA's? I don't know, but it's obviously not working. I don't like shopping anymore. I don't think I'm alone. I can't think of any brink and morter store that's doing well. And they always blame the Internet? Whole foods was doing great for years. Now with uniformed security guards roaming around, tired workers, sneaky product placement; their quarterlies are the chits. They blame competition. It's not competition. Your stores became like everyone else. By the way, the CEO did promise to make staples affordable and he delivered. Milk, eggs, butter, and bread are cheaper than Safeway, along with their brand of product. There 365 products are reasonably priced. I am very respectful to pretty much every store I shop in. By respectful, I treat the store like I live there. I put away items of I didn't need. I don't just leave the item in the cart, or in another area of the store. I don't mess up shelved items, like books, etc. I treat the employees with respect, and try to make their horrid jobs easier. That said, when I walk into a store like Home Depot. A store that is tracking my movements throughout the store with CCTV, and takes a picture of my mug at every isle, checkout, bathroom entrance, point of sale, etc.; I could care less about how I treat the store. Do I care that every one of my transactions is transferred to some server in Richmond Virginia--yes! It's funny, I used to like the company. I was glad when they opened up near me. The employees seemed like they liked/respected their employer. I used to go to their stores just to browse. I usually ended up buying something. Jump foreward to today. I only shop there if I absolutely have to. I walk into that chit box, and can't get out quick enough. If I don't need a product in my hand it goes anywhere except where it was located. My mood changes once I walk through those doors and look into those cameras. I don't think I'm the only one who dislikes being monitored, tracked, and manipulation with product placement. Their employees seem like they are working in a correctional facility. literally every employee seems misserable. Home Depot is a perfect example of too much tracking(I don't know all their digital tracking tools--I just feel like I'm being watched. I don't like showing my ID when returning an item with a receipt.), bad security, and general useless advice from MBA's who should have at least one year of grunt level retail work before being promoted to screwing up a store. I have a feeling tides will turn eventually.
collyw 11y ago
Hmmm.I have seen more evidence of supermarkets shifting the position of everything every few months, so that you have to hunt more to find your eggs, then see lots more other stuff you will need to buy while searching around.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Grocery Store Tactics: Easter Simulator Edition.
pas 11y ago
Integrate analytics and tracking server-side. Duh. (And if you so need window size and other easy-to-get-via-client-side-JS information, render the script into the page instead of putting it into a .js file.) And maybe make all this optional for those that don't want to be tracked. (I mean allow them to register and opt-out of server-side tracking too.) I think they might even start to like you and become sort of loyal.
gorhill 11y ago
> it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik First, a precision: EasyPrivacy blocks Piwik. uBlock Origin enables EasyPrivacy by default. If you think it's wrong for Piwik to be blocked, bring the issue to EasyPrivacy maintainers. Now, why is it "irresponsible" for Piwik to be blocked? Some of us just do not like to have all our movements scrutinized, even by 1st parties -- I personally consider this a healthy stance, I just do not like to be treated as a product. Also, what guarantee there is that all the data collected by one 1st party through Piwik is not sold to any number of 3rd parties? There is no guarantee -- thus all tracking deserve to be blocked as much as it can. It's for the same reason I choose to not disclose my phone number or postal code at the cash register when they ask in brick-and-mortar stores.
- pc86 11y ago
  I can understand phone number, but what possible reason is there to refuse to give zip code? The only thing I can think of using that information for is to determine the optimal location to open another store.
  - pacala 11y ago
    With tinfoil hat on, they mighy want to get a few more fingerprinting bits. https://panopticlick.eff.org https://panopticlick.eff.org
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Zip code data correlates strongly to wealth.
  - pussinboots 11y ago
    I thought part of the reason they ask for zipcode is that it is for verification purposes if you use a credit card to pay
    - pc86 11y ago
      I've only ever run into that when getting gas, and even then only in high-fraud or very busy areas.
threatofrain 11y ago
I think even if we were to accept that some places use tracking responsibly, it's the capacity which could so easily be abused, and so lacking in benefit for the individual, which warrants the blanket use of privacy blocking. Given this, a little more difficulty in "finding the eggs" is a good trade-off, especially since it's not like designers are naive and consigned to random interface choices, and you can actually still do A/B-type testing without user tracking. Otherwise, users have to trust that site owners, out of empathy, will do the right thing with data, and that a broader network of tracking won't occur -- despite that it's totally rational from the site owner's perspective to broadly track users. That strategy is beyond brittle; it's unbelievable.
quantumpotato_ 11y ago
Your second paragraph... that does not apply to grocery stores here in the US. They fill the center with junk and the fresh food, eggs & milk along the sides. Often eggs & milk (commonly used together) are on OPPOSITE halves of the store! http://www.grocery411.com/grocery-store-layout.html http://www.grocery411.com/grocery-store-layout.html
helper 11y ago
If you want to read a good book on studying in-store shopper behavior, you should checkout "Why We Buy" by Paco Underhill. He runs a firm that studies shoppers by secretly following people around in a store and writing down everything they do.
intrasight 11y ago
I assume that if you change the file names of those internal analytics tools then they will stop being blocked.
fweespee_ch 11y ago
> And if this metaphor seems a little obscure, this is why it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik and other such internal analytics tools. Because some of us are trying to do the right thing and your bouncers are still beating us up. Honestly, we only need a statistically significant sample for a few buckets...so unless uBlock and chums hit ~85% none of this effects me. The same is true for virtually every "good actor" in the space. You just need to be able to run an A/B test that is statistically accurate + analytics + RUM. https://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/ https://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/ ~37% Ad blocking is a reasonable proxy for tracking blocking since they usually go hand in hand. [e.g. uBlock] Real world, I see ~35% block rates at $DayJob. I don't care about that at all and I'm amazed any "good actor" would given 65% of the population is more than enough for as many statistically accurate samples as you'd need. So when you say "you are doing the right thing", what isn't included in the above?
masswerk 11y ago
Once, a shop had hired an assistant called "Cookie" to do the job and another one even had hired a specialized clerk (named W.B. Alizer, for the record) and I was totally fine with this. But then, stores started to hire some guys from the Tracker bunch, but said it would be ok, since they had strict orders to stay indoors. Now, this became a little distracting. Every now and then I had to wait for the guy to catch up, who was crawling along with me trying to measure the width of my foot steps with an inch rule, and then there was this guy, who insisted to peek into my pockets and to keep track of its contents in a quart book he had attached to the lining of my coat. (Over time, my coat became that heavy, I had to stop and rip out the lining in order to proceed.) Yay, it was all to my best ... Then, something funny happened as stores began to engage in something they called "optimizing". Had the super market around the corner once sold 5 different sorts of cheese, it was now just 3 with the 2 best selling ones missing (they didn't have much potential for future optimization as they were sold out constantly). Some months later, they started to hide the bread behind a fake wall as soon as I entered and pushed whole piles of umbrellas in my way (since I had once bought one on a stormy afternoon a year ago – I would have understood, if it had been bagels, because I started to buy these as I was searching for the bread in vain.) That is, until last Halloween, when I discovered that there was still bread to buy, when I entered the shop in disguise. Last month, I bumped into a girl that looked rather familiar, just as I was preparing my wig and false mustache for getting some bread at the super market. Remember Cookie? She is still working at a store, inside the server room. We chatted a while, and now I'm a habitual to her work place again. The store is a bit farther away than the fancy super market, but it really outweighs the inconveniences of the other place.
monochromatic 11y ago
Some of us find even that level of tracking to be creepy and invasive, and would rather opt out. You never asked us if we wanted to be "helped" around your store, but we have now answered that question anyway.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>And if this metaphor seems a little obscure, this is why it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik and other such internal analytics tools. uBlock didn't block it. I blocked it, by using uBlock, which I picked because of its stance on trackers. So its more like I found a cloak of invisibility so I don't show up on your cameras. You can't blame the store selling the cloaks, because I and every user like me chooses to wear them. You have to blame the user for using the cloak... but to what point? You are blaming me for not letting your code run on my machine.
btilly 11y ago
You are missing some basic facts about how marketing works. Let's start here to demonstrate. ...when they figure that you and people like you always have difficulty finding the eggs (seriously - why is it always so hard to find the eggs?), they'll move the eggs somewhere more prominent, so they can sell more eggs and you can buy what you came to buy. You think that stores are in business to sell you eggs, and are slightly puzzled that eggs aren't easy to find. But you confidently continue proceed despite direct evidence that stores don't act like you think they should. The answer to your question is that stores are in business to sell you as much as they can, and the eggs are just there to get you to see everything they have to offer. If they made it easy to buy eggs then your life would become easier and they make less money. Stores know this because they hire consultants who tell them what to do. And the ones who refused, made less money then got out-competed or bought out by the ones who followed the advice. Now they all know to bury eggs, and the big ones make each store's layout different so that they can maximize how much consumers wander. You know what else those consultants told them? Candy bars are high profit items, but nobody is going into your stores to buy junk food. Those are impulse buys. So put them right where everyone is forced to stand and wait for the cash register to make it as hard as possible to avoid the impulse. Look down the cereal aisle. They put cereals with healthy branding at eye level for moms, and the obviously exciting cereals at eye level for kids. Note that branding and reality are unrelated. Take a look at the serving size and sugar per serving on all the boxes. No matter what the branding, most of the cereals work out to be about the same. It goes on and on. Marketers have fine-tuned their art to a science. No matter where you look, they have mastered details you wouldn't have thought of. And while they aim to hit your emotional buttons, they do NOT fundamentally aim to please YOU. You're not the client. The store is their client, and your being unable to stop opening your wallet is the product that the store is buying.
zem 11y ago
bad analogy; no one is smashing your cctv cameras; they're just donning an invisibility cloak on the way in. as is their right, even if nethack would like to claim otherwise :).
pdonis 11y ago
> But that's as far as it goes. You, the store owner, may know that; but how do I, the customer, know it? How do I know you aren't selling data from that CCTV camera to others, who don't own your store and don't have the use for the data that you do? Even if you aren't doing that today, how do I know you won't tomorrow, when someone shows up with an offer you simply can't refuse? And so on and so on. You're right that this is a sad situation, when people's desire for privacy means cutting off access to data even for the (few, I suspect, but still...) store owners who actually want to do something with it that might benefit the customer. But it's what we have. If you want to know where to put the eggs, you'll have to figure it out some other way.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

jacquesm 11y ago

> They don't follow you out the store This is actually factually incorrect. Some hints here: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/10/automatic_face_.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/10/automatic_fac... And it goes even deeper than that.

Doctor_Fegg 11y ago
Self-hosted, same-domain Piwik doesn't track you on other sites, and doesn't pull in any external data sources.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Yes, I got you, I was just pointing out to you that if in-real-life stores are capable of following you out of the store using their CCTV systems there is absolutely no reason to assume that you can't use a website's analytics suite to couple that with other databases at your disposal. The major reason why companies will self host analytics services is not because they are trying to protect the privacy of their visitors, it is because they don't want to give out business critical information to third parties.

adsche 11y ago

A little obscure? :) > hurt them if you have to > they smashed the CCTV cameras What? Nope. Not at all. You can still track everybody without a blocker, can you not? Or what harm do you incur that translates into harm or property damage in your metaphor?

dhimes 11y ago
They cry that they are hurt when you block ads. Forbes.com may be the worst of them, but even if I allow ads they block content if I don't allow the trackers. I was going to email them to voice my concern about this, but there wasn't a contact page easily accessible (they really blocked their pages!).
- kelseydh 11y ago
  I think you make a good point. There is an argument to be made against ad blocking, but it can't be made honestly if they are also requiring tracking technology to also be turned on.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Kliment 11y ago

Unfortunately, the reason the eggs are hidden is that they are a low-margin item and people looking for them will pass more high-margin items on the way and be possibly tempted to buy.

gglitch 11y ago

What is meant by "populist" in this critique?

matt4077 11y ago
It means roughly the same as when the term is applied to politicians when they promise lower taxes: A popular measure that actually has detrimental effects in the long term (with the possible connotation that the politician should/does know this and is just exploiting some base emotions).
- gglitch 11y ago
  Does it not sound solidly, unambiguously sound for the long-term health of the market to increase the ability of consumers to make informed decisions?
rmc 11y ago
It's a way make "popular" sound like a bad thing.

davb 11y ago

I find it interesting that a lot of content producers have feel entitled to users' participation in analytics at all. Sure, it may be frustrating when a user blocks tracking tools (especially self hosted ones) but that's the their choice. We got by for decades without analysing user habits (even in a local only context, without correlation with third party data). There are so few examples of cases where analysing user behaviour was a make or break factor in a store's survival. Sure, it can be useful to know what a user looked at and, as you suggest, how difficult it is to find the eggs. But there are better ways. Physical stores at one point (and still now, in many cases) respect that user choice. Want to participate? Get a loyalty card. We'll watch how you spend, but we'll give a little something back to participants. On the web, the solution is simple. Do it on your application servers back end. Have your request handler (which should probably know a lot more about your user in the context of your application than any third party tool) log user requests and actions. You'll be able to tie data gathered to a logged in user and their local purchase or browsing history. You'll get to know your user better and you'll avoid third party tools that creep out a growing proportion of your users. You're not entitled to participation in analytics.

dhimes 11y ago
We got by for decades without analysing user habits Depends when you start counting the decades. Since Netscape and the 'coming out' of the www, we've always paid attention to where people go on our own web pages.
- leereeves 11y ago
  And stores have always paid attention to how many items they sell. But (continuing the metaphor) now they're tracking what each customer buys and when, where they came from and where they go, where their eyes wander and how long they look at an item... Then sharing that data with other stores to profile customers, and find out who's sick, pregnant, graduating, on a diet, what political candidates they support... Tracking today is nothing like tracking site visitors in the '90s.
  - 11y ago

rmc 11y ago

Tough. The advertising industry and tracking has gone too far. The amount of websites with local analytics is small. I suspect that nearly all US based shops with local analytics is breaking (EU) data protection law. Why should I assist them in breaking the law when it harms my privacy?

burkaman 11y ago

Why can't you just ask people for permission first?

pacala 11y ago

Believe it or not, people have been optimizing the eggs location long before the Internet, using the simple art of [anonymous] sampling and statistics. There is absolutely no technical need to track everyone's every move, the ad / surveillance industry is overreaching by a huge margin. See http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/about-us/nielsen-families.html http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/about-us/nielsen-families.html for an example of sampling in action. Furthermore, the eggs are hidden on purpose, such that people have to walk a long way along aisles filled with high margin impulse buy crap. As a customer, this "optimization" is actively trying to exploit my atavic weaknesses and damage my health. Thank you very much, I don't sense a whole lot of sympathy for me here, just a race for the quick and dirty buck.

marincounty 11y ago
They have been doing it for a long time, but we know the game now. Most people haven't figured out they are being digitally tracked, but when that happens, I have a feeling consumers will get proactive, and really begin to withhold, or make it difficult for entities to track buying habits. As to eggs in the back of the store, yes milk and eggs are always in the back of every store I can recall. We all know the game. Why piss off your loyal customers? Too many MBA's? I don't know, but it's obviously not working. I don't like shopping anymore. I don't think I'm alone. I can't think of any brink and morter store that's doing well. And they always blame the Internet? Whole foods was doing great for years. Now with uniformed security guards roaming around, tired workers, sneaky product placement; their quarterlies are the chits. They blame competition. It's not competition. Your stores became like everyone else. By the way, the CEO did promise to make staples affordable and he delivered. Milk, eggs, butter, and bread are cheaper than Safeway, along with their brand of product. There 365 products are reasonably priced. I am very respectful to pretty much every store I shop in. By respectful, I treat the store like I live there. I put away items of I didn't need. I don't just leave the item in the cart, or in another area of the store. I don't mess up shelved items, like books, etc. I treat the employees with respect, and try to make their horrid jobs easier. That said, when I walk into a store like Home Depot. A store that is tracking my movements throughout the store with CCTV, and takes a picture of my mug at every isle, checkout, bathroom entrance, point of sale, etc.; I could care less about how I treat the store. Do I care that every one of my transactions is transferred to some server in Richmond Virginia--yes! It's funny, I used to like the company. I was glad when they opened up near me. The employees seemed like they liked/respected their employer. I used to go to their stores just to browse. I usually ended up buying something. Jump foreward to today. I only shop there if I absolutely have to. I walk into that chit box, and can't get out quick enough. If I don't need a product in my hand it goes anywhere except where it was located. My mood changes once I walk through those doors and look into those cameras. I don't think I'm the only one who dislikes being monitored, tracked, and manipulation with product placement. Their employees seem like they are working in a correctional facility. literally every employee seems misserable. Home Depot is a perfect example of too much tracking(I don't know all their digital tracking tools--I just feel like I'm being watched. I don't like showing my ID when returning an item with a receipt.), bad security, and general useless advice from MBA's who should have at least one year of grunt level retail work before being promoted to screwing up a store. I have a feeling tides will turn eventually.

collyw 11y ago

Hmmm.I have seen more evidence of supermarkets shifting the position of everything every few months, so that you have to hunt more to find your eggs, then see lots more other stuff you will need to buy while searching around.

roymurdock 11y ago
Grocery Store Tactics: Easter Simulator Edition.

pas 11y ago

Integrate analytics and tracking server-side. Duh. (And if you so need window size and other easy-to-get-via-client-side-JS information, render the script into the page instead of putting it into a .js file.) And maybe make all this optional for those that don't want to be tracked. (I mean allow them to register and opt-out of server-side tracking too.) I think they might even start to like you and become sort of loyal.

gorhill 11y ago

> it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik First, a precision: EasyPrivacy blocks Piwik. uBlock Origin enables EasyPrivacy by default. If you think it's wrong for Piwik to be blocked, bring the issue to EasyPrivacy maintainers. Now, why is it "irresponsible" for Piwik to be blocked? Some of us just do not like to have all our movements scrutinized, even by 1st parties -- I personally consider this a healthy stance, I just do not like to be treated as a product. Also, what guarantee there is that all the data collected by one 1st party through Piwik is not sold to any number of 3rd parties? There is no guarantee -- thus all tracking deserve to be blocked as much as it can. It's for the same reason I choose to not disclose my phone number or postal code at the cash register when they ask in brick-and-mortar stores.

pc86 11y ago
I can understand phone number, but what possible reason is there to refuse to give zip code? The only thing I can think of using that information for is to determine the optimal location to open another store.
- pacala 11y ago
  With tinfoil hat on, they mighy want to get a few more fingerprinting bits. https://panopticlick.eff.org https://panopticlick.eff.org
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Zip code data correlates strongly to wealth.
- pussinboots 11y ago
  I thought part of the reason they ask for zipcode is that it is for verification purposes if you use a credit card to pay
  - pc86 11y ago
    I've only ever run into that when getting gas, and even then only in high-fraud or very busy areas.

threatofrain 11y ago

I think even if we were to accept that some places use tracking responsibly, it's the capacity which could so easily be abused, and so lacking in benefit for the individual, which warrants the blanket use of privacy blocking. Given this, a little more difficulty in "finding the eggs" is a good trade-off, especially since it's not like designers are naive and consigned to random interface choices, and you can actually still do A/B-type testing without user tracking. Otherwise, users have to trust that site owners, out of empathy, will do the right thing with data, and that a broader network of tracking won't occur -- despite that it's totally rational from the site owner's perspective to broadly track users. That strategy is beyond brittle; it's unbelievable.

quantumpotato_ 11y ago

Your second paragraph... that does not apply to grocery stores here in the US. They fill the center with junk and the fresh food, eggs & milk along the sides. Often eggs & milk (commonly used together) are on OPPOSITE halves of the store! http://www.grocery411.com/grocery-store-layout.html http://www.grocery411.com/grocery-store-layout.html

helper 11y ago

If you want to read a good book on studying in-store shopper behavior, you should checkout "Why We Buy" by Paco Underhill. He runs a firm that studies shoppers by secretly following people around in a store and writing down everything they do.

intrasight 11y ago

I assume that if you change the file names of those internal analytics tools then they will stop being blocked.

fweespee_ch 11y ago

> And if this metaphor seems a little obscure, this is why it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik and other such internal analytics tools. Because some of us are trying to do the right thing and your bouncers are still beating us up. Honestly, we only need a statistically significant sample for a few buckets...so unless uBlock and chums hit ~85% none of this effects me. The same is true for virtually every "good actor" in the space. You just need to be able to run an A/B test that is statistically accurate + analytics + RUM. https://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/ https://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/ ~37% Ad blocking is a reasonable proxy for tracking blocking since they usually go hand in hand. [e.g. uBlock] Real world, I see ~35% block rates at $DayJob. I don't care about that at all and I'm amazed any "good actor" would given 65% of the population is more than enough for as many statistically accurate samples as you'd need. So when you say "you are doing the right thing", what isn't included in the above?

masswerk 11y ago

Once, a shop had hired an assistant called "Cookie" to do the job and another one even had hired a specialized clerk (named W.B. Alizer, for the record) and I was totally fine with this. But then, stores started to hire some guys from the Tracker bunch, but said it would be ok, since they had strict orders to stay indoors. Now, this became a little distracting. Every now and then I had to wait for the guy to catch up, who was crawling along with me trying to measure the width of my foot steps with an inch rule, and then there was this guy, who insisted to peek into my pockets and to keep track of its contents in a quart book he had attached to the lining of my coat. (Over time, my coat became that heavy, I had to stop and rip out the lining in order to proceed.) Yay, it was all to my best ... Then, something funny happened as stores began to engage in something they called "optimizing". Had the super market around the corner once sold 5 different sorts of cheese, it was now just 3 with the 2 best selling ones missing (they didn't have much potential for future optimization as they were sold out constantly). Some months later, they started to hide the bread behind a fake wall as soon as I entered and pushed whole piles of umbrellas in my way (since I had once bought one on a stormy afternoon a year ago – I would have understood, if it had been bagels, because I started to buy these as I was searching for the bread in vain.) That is, until last Halloween, when I discovered that there was still bread to buy, when I entered the shop in disguise. Last month, I bumped into a girl that looked rather familiar, just as I was preparing my wig and false mustache for getting some bread at the super market. Remember Cookie? She is still working at a store, inside the server room. We chatted a while, and now I'm a habitual to her work place again. The store is a bit farther away than the fancy super market, but it really outweighs the inconveniences of the other place.

monochromatic 11y ago

Some of us find even that level of tracking to be creepy and invasive, and would rather opt out. You never asked us if we wanted to be "helped" around your store, but we have now answered that question anyway.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>And if this metaphor seems a little obscure, this is why it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik and other such internal analytics tools. uBlock didn't block it. I blocked it, by using uBlock, which I picked because of its stance on trackers. So its more like I found a cloak of invisibility so I don't show up on your cameras. You can't blame the store selling the cloaks, because I and every user like me chooses to wear them. You have to blame the user for using the cloak... but to what point? You are blaming me for not letting your code run on my machine.

btilly 11y ago

You are missing some basic facts about how marketing works. Let's start here to demonstrate. ...when they figure that you and people like you always have difficulty finding the eggs (seriously - why is it always so hard to find the eggs?), they'll move the eggs somewhere more prominent, so they can sell more eggs and you can buy what you came to buy. You think that stores are in business to sell you eggs, and are slightly puzzled that eggs aren't easy to find. But you confidently continue proceed despite direct evidence that stores don't act like you think they should. The answer to your question is that stores are in business to sell you as much as they can, and the eggs are just there to get you to see everything they have to offer. If they made it easy to buy eggs then your life would become easier and they make less money. Stores know this because they hire consultants who tell them what to do. And the ones who refused, made less money then got out-competed or bought out by the ones who followed the advice. Now they all know to bury eggs, and the big ones make each store's layout different so that they can maximize how much consumers wander. You know what else those consultants told them? Candy bars are high profit items, but nobody is going into your stores to buy junk food. Those are impulse buys. So put them right where everyone is forced to stand and wait for the cash register to make it as hard as possible to avoid the impulse. Look down the cereal aisle. They put cereals with healthy branding at eye level for moms, and the obviously exciting cereals at eye level for kids. Note that branding and reality are unrelated. Take a look at the serving size and sugar per serving on all the boxes. No matter what the branding, most of the cereals work out to be about the same. It goes on and on. Marketers have fine-tuned their art to a science. No matter where you look, they have mastered details you wouldn't have thought of. And while they aim to hit your emotional buttons, they do NOT fundamentally aim to please YOU. You're not the client. The store is their client, and your being unable to stop opening your wallet is the product that the store is buying.

zem 11y ago

bad analogy; no one is smashing your cctv cameras; they're just donning an invisibility cloak on the way in. as is their right, even if nethack would like to claim otherwise :).

pdonis 11y ago

> But that's as far as it goes. You, the store owner, may know that; but how do I, the customer, know it? How do I know you aren't selling data from that CCTV camera to others, who don't own your store and don't have the use for the data that you do? Even if you aren't doing that today, how do I know you won't tomorrow, when someone shows up with an offer you simply can't refuse? And so on and so on. You're right that this is a sad situation, when people's desire for privacy means cutting off access to data even for the (few, I suspect, but still...) store owners who actually want to do something with it that might benefit the customer. But it's what we have. If you want to know where to put the eggs, you'll have to figure it out some other way.

deleted 11y ago

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