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> or you have to do a lot of careful dividing up the "static" resources from the dynamic Static / dynamic is orthogonal to private / non-private. It's importan
by gnode 8y ago
> or you have to do a lot of careful dividing up the "static" resources from the dynamic
Static / dynamic is orthogonal to private / non-private. It's important to consider that what public or static information a user requests may be private for them.
Consider for instance, if I go to WebMD's page on e.g. Lupus. If the static, public image on the page were pulled in from a CDN, the fact I visited that page is now leaked to a third party, for which they could infer whatever they wanted to. Or maybe sell that on, so drug companies can hit me up with targeted ads.
- Sohcahtoa82 8y ago> Or maybe sell that on, so drug companies can hit me up with targeted ads. If you're using an ad blocker, wouldn't this be irrelevant? The drug company would be wasting money buying data that will be worthless.
- gnode 8y ago> If you're using an ad blocker, wouldn't this be irrelevant? No; using an ad blocker won't prevent this kind of data collection. Ad blockers prevent you seeing ads, and some can block certain page elements associated with data collection (e.g. social media buttons), but this type of data collection is indistinguishable from the content itself. While there are still other users who don't block ads, the incentive to collect such data for targeted advertising exists, and I think it's unlikely you will be specifically excluded from the dataset on this basis. I think it's also worth bearing in mind that it's in the interest of a data vendor to inflate expectations of the relevance of the data they sell.