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> They are explicitly stating they use Referrer-like data to track users. To me, "track user" means persistently ID one person. This sounds more like inferring
by snowwrestler 7y ago
> They are explicitly stating they use Referrer-like data to track users.
To me, "track user" means persistently ID one person. This sounds more like inferring anonymous interest, like inferring that someone arriving from ESPN.com might be interested in your sports section.
If that person comes back tomorrow from The Financial Times, you might infer that they are interested in the economy.
But without cookies, I don't see how you would recognize that visit as the same person as yesterday and integrate the sports and economy interests into a persistent profile. Each visit would be self-contained, which doesn't fit my definition of "tracking."
- JohnFen 7y ago> But without cookies, I don't see how you would recognize that visit as the same person as yesterday and integrate the sports and economy interests into a persistent profile. If you gather enough of that "anonymous" data, and particularly if you combine it with other data sets (as they claim they are intending to do), then it's not that hard to recognize individuals based on their usage patterns and metadata.
- spiderfarmer 7y agoBut does it matter if you don’t know who they are?
- mr_crankypants 7y agoGoing with that premise for the sake of argument: Nah, probably not. But that premise is well-known to be in conflict with established reality. Identifying specific individuals from these sorts of data points is famously, disturbingly easy to do. People even do it just for fun, almost like it were an Advent of Code challenge. That's the reason why there will never be another Netflix Prize.
- JohnFen 7y agoIt does to me.
- eclipxe 7y agoWhy?
- JaRail 7y agoThey didn't say no cookies. They said no third-party cookies.