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I work for an analytics company, this will affect my snippet – I don't think it is a big deal, but I'm going to benchmark it on a few sites. From what is descri

I work for an analytics company, this will affect my snippet – I don't think it is a big deal, but I'm going to benchmark it on a few sites. From what is described here, it may actually help us. When folks throw tons of tags into their site, we're all competing against each-other as well as the site's own loading – it makes sense to prioritize the site's rendering. I think of this as no more invasive than pre-caching stuff in a page when you see links that are likely to be clicked, or any other browser optimization. I may be pounding my fist later if the results don't look great, but ultimately, I think Mozilla's heart is in the right place. I can think of tons of ways to work around this if I thought it was a real issue, I don't. People who want to block analytics, trackers, ad networks, etc... know how, and this doesn't feel like it is targeted at those people, or even squarely at the tracking pixels. HN-pre-emptive-defend-myself: My company doesn't share or sell data with third parties (it's in our TOS – and could obviously change in some Orwellian future, but we'd have to update the TOS), it's the customer's data, they can use it in the same way they'd use any other data they collect. We don't do cross-domain tracking, or aggregate behavioral information across customers, and the way we've built it, it makes it pretty hard to tie any two visitors together across sites if you were to hypothetically acquire our dataset. We're also working on building tools to comply with GDPR and wipe out data per-request. Anyways, I think a lot of very bad actors have made the space have a bad reputation and I don't blame anyone for blocking everything, or even for hating my company, or generally all analytics.

Sophistifunk 9y ago
It's a grey area. But I am interested, do your ToS forbid your customers from on-sharing the data with cross-site aggregators?
- jtmcmc 9y ago
  I am not the OP but from looking at their profile - https://heapanalytics.com/terms https://heapanalytics.com/terms you can check there
- anfedorov 9y ago
  "on-sharing the data with cross-site aggregators"? The ToS and Privacy Policy of an analytics company discloses what the that company may do with their client's users' data, not what the client can do with their own users' data. There's another Privacy Policy between the client and the user where the client discloses what they may and may not do with user data and the user decides whether to become / remain a user. There are also laws which dictate the data handling further on behalf of large groups of users, e.g. GDRP for EU citizens and, on this side of the pond, interesting Supreme Court cases being decided about what kind of data users could have property rights to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States
- codezero 9y ago
  Nope – not explicitly, that would be something within _their_ terms of service since it's their data. Their own customers would have to hold them accountable. I know that's a cop-out – but I can't imagine a system where we could enforce some kind of downstream compliance. Things like GDPR are a good way to make companies accountable and I look forward to that becoming more broadly accepted.
dsr_ 9y ago
A couple of years ago I went to a conference where one of the speakers outlined his company's web page optimization methods. The big one was to delay executing JS until at least the visible page content was loaded, and all JS that actually implemented customer-useful bits. His example page loaded 94 scripts, which he claimed was representative of many pages.
- megaman22 9y ago
  > His example page loaded 94 scripts, which he claimed was representative of many pages. I know this is the norm, but can we just agree that this is insane? Some sites I go to, I just see the block badge on UBlock Origin ticking up like a Bitcoin price tracker.
  - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
    > ticking up like a Bitcoin price tracker Fitting comparison - we can also expect performance degradation similar to Bitcoin's.
- smsm42 9y ago
  One of the consequences of installing Ghostery was that it shows a counter of how many scripts are loaded on the page. Turns out I have severely underestimated how many scripts average site loads - and I work in the industry! As an example, I just loaded CNN site - it has 28(!) trackers and uses 38(!) different domains. And that's a low number because some of these scripts would load other scripts if I enabled them to run... That's a super-mainstream site, imagine how many more shady ones have.
notyourday 9y ago
> My company doesn't share or sell data with third parties (it's in our TOS – and could obviously change in some Orwellian future, but we'd have to update the TOS), it's the customer's data, they can use it in the same way they'd use any other data they collect. We don't do cross-domain tracking, or aggregate behavioral information across customers, and the way we've built it, it makes it pretty hard to tie any two visitors together across sites if you were to hypothetically acquire our dataset. Are you the CEO and do you currently own controlling interest? Because if not, then everything that you are saying is worth about as much as a slice of pizza someone dropped in the NYC subway.
- notyourday 9y ago
  Jesus. Really? Downvotes? Pretend this person worked for facebook and made some statement regarding what the company does. (a) he would be fired on the spot by the company itself ( as he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company ) (b) he would be laughed out the room because he does not control company decisions The same applies to every single company. Every single one.
  - downbloated 9y ago
    The clue here is that even though you’ve been downvoted by multiple people, they’re all too chickenshit to voice their “legitimate” opinion backing the downvote. The only real interpretation here is that, while ethically, you may be correct, you’ve expressed an opinion that “stealing is wrong” among members of the thieves guild.
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      notyourday is insulting the guy based on a supposed lack of "authorization" to speak. That has absolutely zero to do with ethics of the company or the contents of their post.
      - notyourday 9y ago
        When pointing out that the king is naked is considered an insult to and by the people clapping about those amazing invisible clothes, one needs to seriously examine if he or she wants to be the person clapping
tedmiston 9y ago
I also work for an analytics company too, or more accurately a data router that integrates with other analytics companies, including yours. I'd be interested in seeing your benchmark results as it's unclear to me whether / how this potentially impacts us.
Yizahi 9y ago
> wipe out data per-request Why would you do that? You are providing a service to the people that is a pure benefit for them and doesn't harm them at all. Why would anyone want to delete such helpful data?
- erk__ 9y ago
  If they don't want a € 10 million fine they have to comply with GDPR, even if no one is going to use it.
  - kabes 9y ago
    AFAIK, GDPR doesn't tell you there need to be an automated way to delete the data. If people can send you a mail with the request and you manually delete it, that's also fine. So if no one will use it, you basically don't have to do anything and be compliant (to this specific GDPR rule).
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      Sure, but if people use your service and some 0.01% of them might send a request just as a matter of principle once GDPR kicks in, then it's quite plausible that the cost efficient way to handle this is to have an automated solution rather than a manual process that doesn't scale.
    - whostolemyhat 9y ago
      From what I understand, as long as you can say there's a process in place (and could actually follow it) then you're compliant with the GDPR.
cyborgx7 9y ago
I'm looking forward to the EU regulations kicking in and you having to get consent from everyone ou save data on.
- Ygg2 9y ago
  Do you agree for us to save your data? [Yes] [Read more]
  - ainiriand 9y ago
    The other option, Closes tab, is simply not gonna happen so why annoy the user.
    - bigbugbag 9y ago
      legal obligation.
austincheney 9y ago
> I can think of tons of ways to work around this if I thought it was a real issue, I don't. People who want to block analytics, trackers, ad networks, etc... know how, and this doesn't feel like it is targeted at those people, or even squarely at the tracking pixels. A slow and shitty experience using the web shouldn't be the accepted baseline. People who know how to block spyware can't block everything. There is a lot that causes the page to hang if not blocked in a certain way, provided that certain way is available via some kind of tooling.
j_s 9y ago
I appreciate your willingness to share your perspective here. The problem is that marketing/PR is a profession dedicated to finding whatever just-barely-technically-true weasel wording is required to make what they're getting paid for sound at least "ok" and preferrably "great!" If you have time (definitely not expected) I would like to hear more specifics regarding this aspect of your statement: > We don't do cross-domain tracking, or aggregate behavioral information across customers vs. https://heapanalytics.com/terms https://heapanalytics.com/terms > We may also use data in an aggregated form for our own purposes
- codezero 9y ago
  Yeah, very good point, we should clarify what we mean by "for our own purposes." What that means right now is that we use this data to improve query performance, and for internal monitoring. We do not use that data for commercial purposes, outside of the fact that we are ourselves a business.
jamesfe 9y ago
I'm not sure why you feel the need to defend yourself. HN has a low opinion of the concept of selling user data, but in practice, there are plenty of ad-supported startups represented here. Google is selling your data to marketers. Facebook is one giant data-collection/data-sales empire. In theory, the HN collective hates data selling, but in practice, they love the companies that are doing it and their products. I find it ironic that I come here and see people worshipping the big adtech companies and their tech but then when someone posts a comment about not selling user data, a thousand tin-hat naysayers jump out of the woodwork to flog them to death. It's OK. It's why I can read the NY Times and a thousand other online newspapers - FOR FREE. It's why I can go to Google and type in "why does my butt burn when I poop" and get an answer - FOR FREE. It's why I can use dozens of adtech and user-data-supported services - FOR FREE. I pay for those things with data about me, my habits, and my browsing history.

Sophistifunk 9y ago

It's a grey area. But I am interested, do your ToS forbid your customers from on-sharing the data with cross-site aggregators?

jtmcmc 9y ago
I am not the OP but from looking at their profile - https://heapanalytics.com/terms https://heapanalytics.com/terms you can check there
anfedorov 9y ago
"on-sharing the data with cross-site aggregators"? The ToS and Privacy Policy of an analytics company discloses what the that company may do with their client's users' data, not what the client can do with their own users' data. There's another Privacy Policy between the client and the user where the client discloses what they may and may not do with user data and the user decides whether to become / remain a user. There are also laws which dictate the data handling further on behalf of large groups of users, e.g. GDRP for EU citizens and, on this side of the pond, interesting Supreme Court cases being decided about what kind of data users could have property rights to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States
codezero 9y ago
Nope – not explicitly, that would be something within _their_ terms of service since it's their data. Their own customers would have to hold them accountable. I know that's a cop-out – but I can't imagine a system where we could enforce some kind of downstream compliance. Things like GDPR are a good way to make companies accountable and I look forward to that becoming more broadly accepted.

dsr_ 9y ago

A couple of years ago I went to a conference where one of the speakers outlined his company's web page optimization methods. The big one was to delay executing JS until at least the visible page content was loaded, and all JS that actually implemented customer-useful bits. His example page loaded 94 scripts, which he claimed was representative of many pages.

megaman22 9y ago
> His example page loaded 94 scripts, which he claimed was representative of many pages. I know this is the norm, but can we just agree that this is insane? Some sites I go to, I just see the block badge on UBlock Origin ticking up like a Bitcoin price tracker.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago
  > ticking up like a Bitcoin price tracker Fitting comparison - we can also expect performance degradation similar to Bitcoin's.
smsm42 9y ago
One of the consequences of installing Ghostery was that it shows a counter of how many scripts are loaded on the page. Turns out I have severely underestimated how many scripts average site loads - and I work in the industry! As an example, I just loaded CNN site - it has 28(!) trackers and uses 38(!) different domains. And that's a low number because some of these scripts would load other scripts if I enabled them to run... That's a super-mainstream site, imagine how many more shady ones have.

notyourday 9y ago

> My company doesn't share or sell data with third parties (it's in our TOS – and could obviously change in some Orwellian future, but we'd have to update the TOS), it's the customer's data, they can use it in the same way they'd use any other data they collect. We don't do cross-domain tracking, or aggregate behavioral information across customers, and the way we've built it, it makes it pretty hard to tie any two visitors together across sites if you were to hypothetically acquire our dataset. Are you the CEO and do you currently own controlling interest? Because if not, then everything that you are saying is worth about as much as a slice of pizza someone dropped in the NYC subway.

notyourday 9y ago
Jesus. Really? Downvotes? Pretend this person worked for facebook and made some statement regarding what the company does. (a) he would be fired on the spot by the company itself ( as he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company ) (b) he would be laughed out the room because he does not control company decisions The same applies to every single company. Every single one.
- downbloated 9y ago
  The clue here is that even though you’ve been downvoted by multiple people, they’re all too chickenshit to voice their “legitimate” opinion backing the downvote. The only real interpretation here is that, while ethically, you may be correct, you’ve expressed an opinion that “stealing is wrong” among members of the thieves guild.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    notyourday is insulting the guy based on a supposed lack of "authorization" to speak. That has absolutely zero to do with ethics of the company or the contents of their post.
    - notyourday 9y ago
      When pointing out that the king is naked is considered an insult to and by the people clapping about those amazing invisible clothes, one needs to seriously examine if he or she wants to be the person clapping

tedmiston 9y ago

I also work for an analytics company too, or more accurately a data router that integrates with other analytics companies, including yours. I'd be interested in seeing your benchmark results as it's unclear to me whether / how this potentially impacts us.

Yizahi 9y ago

> wipe out data per-request Why would you do that? You are providing a service to the people that is a pure benefit for them and doesn't harm them at all. Why would anyone want to delete such helpful data?

erk__ 9y ago
If they don't want a € 10 million fine they have to comply with GDPR, even if no one is going to use it.
- kabes 9y ago
  AFAIK, GDPR doesn't tell you there need to be an automated way to delete the data. If people can send you a mail with the request and you manually delete it, that's also fine. So if no one will use it, you basically don't have to do anything and be compliant (to this specific GDPR rule).
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    Sure, but if people use your service and some 0.01% of them might send a request just as a matter of principle once GDPR kicks in, then it's quite plausible that the cost efficient way to handle this is to have an automated solution rather than a manual process that doesn't scale.
  - whostolemyhat 9y ago
    From what I understand, as long as you can say there's a process in place (and could actually follow it) then you're compliant with the GDPR.

cyborgx7 9y ago

I'm looking forward to the EU regulations kicking in and you having to get consent from everyone ou save data on.

Ygg2 9y ago
Do you agree for us to save your data? [Yes] [Read more]
- ainiriand 9y ago
  The other option, Closes tab, is simply not gonna happen so why annoy the user.
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    legal obligation.

austincheney 9y ago

> I can think of tons of ways to work around this if I thought it was a real issue, I don't. People who want to block analytics, trackers, ad networks, etc... know how, and this doesn't feel like it is targeted at those people, or even squarely at the tracking pixels. A slow and shitty experience using the web shouldn't be the accepted baseline. People who know how to block spyware can't block everything. There is a lot that causes the page to hang if not blocked in a certain way, provided that certain way is available via some kind of tooling.

j_s 9y ago

I appreciate your willingness to share your perspective here. The problem is that marketing/PR is a profession dedicated to finding whatever just-barely-technically-true weasel wording is required to make what they're getting paid for sound at least "ok" and preferrably "great!" If you have time (definitely not expected) I would like to hear more specifics regarding this aspect of your statement: > We don't do cross-domain tracking, or aggregate behavioral information across customers vs. https://heapanalytics.com/terms https://heapanalytics.com/terms > We may also use data in an aggregated form for our own purposes

codezero 9y ago
Yeah, very good point, we should clarify what we mean by "for our own purposes." What that means right now is that we use this data to improve query performance, and for internal monitoring. We do not use that data for commercial purposes, outside of the fact that we are ourselves a business.

jamesfe 9y ago

I'm not sure why you feel the need to defend yourself. HN has a low opinion of the concept of selling user data, but in practice, there are plenty of ad-supported startups represented here. Google is selling your data to marketers. Facebook is one giant data-collection/data-sales empire. In theory, the HN collective hates data selling, but in practice, they love the companies that are doing it and their products. I find it ironic that I come here and see people worshipping the big adtech companies and their tech but then when someone posts a comment about not selling user data, a thousand tin-hat naysayers jump out of the woodwork to flog them to death. It's OK. It's why I can read the NY Times and a thousand other online newspapers - FOR FREE. It's why I can go to Google and type in "why does my butt burn when I poop" and get an answer - FOR FREE. It's why I can use dozens of adtech and user-data-supported services - FOR FREE. I pay for those things with data about me, my habits, and my browsing history.