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I think the answer isn't technical, but legal and cultural. Make it unacceptable in the court of public opinion for companies to misuse this data, and strength

by Frondo 10y ago

I think the answer isn't technical, but legal and cultural. Make it unacceptable in the court of public opinion for companies to misuse this data, and strengthen privacy laws. These two things, of course, go hand-in-hand, but us techies tend to look, I think, for the technical solution because that's the place where it's easiest to see how we could have any sort of impact. The other stuff is a lot of talking to and listening to people, consensus-building, being persuasive, etc.

Freak_NL 10y ago
Legislation and regulation are necessary, and they tend to help to keep the really big boys in check, but how can you actually tell if a company is actively engaged in compiling profiles on you or not? I can ask my browser to pass the Do-Not-Track header indicating my objection that practice, but why would a company specialised in tracking users respect that header? I have tried to convince the Dutch banks I use (ING and ABN AMRO, i.e., big banks) to stop employing tracking beacons and third party tracking services on their secured internet banking environments, but the responses I get range from 'yeah we need those to improve your customer experience' to 'you are welcome to block these trackers yourself' (I already do, thank you very much).