5 ms·

Plenty of sites respect user privacy. I should know; I run dozens of them.

by toby- 7y ago

coldtea 7y ago
Define plenty. Are among those "plenty" the actual important pages that people want to use? Or some irrelevant pages here and there? And how do you know there are plenty? In fact, even if it is so, how can anyone verify that, even just about your sites? We can merely just trust you.
- liability 7y ago
  Most of the articles I click through to from HN work just fine with all JS, including first party, blocked by uMatrix.
- hueving 7y ago
  >the actual important pages that people want to use? Where is this special list of important pages? Are the sites I want to use not important? Does your comment need to be so simultaneously defeatist and hostile?
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >Where is this special list of important pages? Are the sites I want to use not important? Does your comment need to be so simultaneously defeatist and hostile? Or, as I like to call it, pragmatic. Visits are a power law distribution, 80% of people's visits go to 20% of sites, and so on, recursively. s So unless e.g. the top 1000 (which may vary depending on country) people want to use are there, e.g. the social media, news sites, booking, video, shopping sites, banking sites, you're just talking about a number of niche websites. Sites that "still work with JS disabled" are in the minority on those lists. Essentially you're saying "don't use all those sites with the content/services you want", use all those others that don't have tracking (but which you don't really care for). E.g. pointing to Diaspora vs Facebook... The best I've seen people come up with on this front is DDG vs Google.
    - half-kh-hacker 7y ago
      > Sites that "still work with JS disabled" are in the minority on those lists. You'd be surprised how many sites are still viewable without JS enabled.
      - oefrha 7y ago
        You’d be surprised how many sites are more viewable without JS enabled.
        liability 7y ago
        Damn straight! Disabling JS fixes more websites than it breaks.
TylerE 7y ago
There are plenty of ways to track that involve zero javascript.
aasasd 7y ago
I feel like this is a reference to ‘Arrested Development.’
- hinkley 7y ago
  And if it is not, it should be. DOZENS.
- toby- 7y ago
  Haha, it was indeed my inspiration. But it's also true! Dozens! :)
stiray 7y ago
If plenty is "a few" than I would agree (and I am glad you respect privacy). I am still searching for one site that I could give an example for GDPR and they are all blatantly violating it. In most cases they just give you fake impression they respect privacy (by setting banner to "opt-out" (which is violation on its own) after the tracking 3rd party scripts are already loaded). The whole privacy deal on the web just shows moral corrosion. It is putting IT neck to neck with scammers.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  > I am still searching for one site that I could give an example for GDPR and they are all blatantly violating it. I think the reason you can't find one is likely because you are disqualifying all the ones that aren't violating it. There a lots of websites that don't violate GDPR: they don't record any information. Perhaps we can quibble about server logs and whether or not IP addresses are PII, but let's stick to at least the broad strokes here since you are saying all sites blatantly violate GDPR. I think what you are probably trying to say is that amongst the websites that are trying to harvest your data, (virtually) all of them do so in a way that violates GDPR. This is not surprising to me, because at its heart GDPR is trying to encourage companies not to harvest personal information. I don't think we will ever get around that. The question is not whether or not many (most? virtually all?) companies will try to get around GDPR (they will). The question is whether or not GDPR will have an positive influence on the use of private data. I can say in the company I do work for, it has completely transformed how we deal with PII. We now actually have gatekeepers that tell marketing what they can and can't have access to. If there are problems, then people actually get chewed out and we put real, emergency resources into fixing them. I mean it is absolutely night and day. For us there is always this fight between people and departments that would like unrestricted access to information and people who are protecting it. Without GDPR, there was no defense! There was no argument you could make -- "It's wrong!" "By whose definition? The lawyers are fine with it" Now we can legitimately say, "You can't legally do that". Not only that, but I've even had marketing managers being very concerned that we might be handling data incorrectly. I've never, ever seen that before in my 30 year career. Yeah, there are lots of problems and I don't see them going away ever, but man GDPR is really helping in a lot of areas.

Plenty of sites respect user privacy. I should know; I run dozens of them.

by toby- 7y ago

Plenty of sites respect user privacy. I should know; I run dozens of them.

Define plenty. Are among those "plenty" the actual important pages that people want to use? Or some irrelevant pages here and there? And how do you know there are plenty? In fact, even if it is so, how can anyone verify that, even just about your sites? We can merely just trust you.

liability 7y ago
Most of the articles I click through to from HN work just fine with all JS, including first party, blocked by uMatrix.
hueving 7y ago
>the actual important pages that people want to use? Where is this special list of important pages? Are the sites I want to use not important? Does your comment need to be so simultaneously defeatist and hostile?
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Where is this special list of important pages? Are the sites I want to use not important? Does your comment need to be so simultaneously defeatist and hostile? Or, as I like to call it, pragmatic. Visits are a power law distribution, 80% of people's visits go to 20% of sites, and so on, recursively. s So unless e.g. the top 1000 (which may vary depending on country) people want to use are there, e.g. the social media, news sites, booking, video, shopping sites, banking sites, you're just talking about a number of niche websites. Sites that "still work with JS disabled" are in the minority on those lists. Essentially you're saying "don't use all those sites with the content/services you want", use all those others that don't have tracking (but which you don't really care for). E.g. pointing to Diaspora vs Facebook... The best I've seen people come up with on this front is DDG vs Google.
  - half-kh-hacker 7y ago
    > Sites that "still work with JS disabled" are in the minority on those lists. You'd be surprised how many sites are still viewable without JS enabled.
    - oefrha 7y ago
      You’d be surprised how many sites are more viewable without JS enabled.
      - liability 7y ago
        Damn straight! Disabling JS fixes more websites than it breaks.

TylerE 7y ago

There are plenty of ways to track that involve zero javascript.

aasasd 7y ago

I feel like this is a reference to ‘Arrested Development.’

hinkley 7y ago
And if it is not, it should be. DOZENS.
toby- 7y ago
Haha, it was indeed my inspiration. But it's also true! Dozens! :)

stiray 7y ago

If plenty is "a few" than I would agree (and I am glad you respect privacy). I am still searching for one site that I could give an example for GDPR and they are all blatantly violating it. In most cases they just give you fake impression they respect privacy (by setting banner to "opt-out" (which is violation on its own) after the tracking 3rd party scripts are already loaded). The whole privacy deal on the web just shows moral corrosion. It is putting IT neck to neck with scammers.

mikekchar 7y ago
> I am still searching for one site that I could give an example for GDPR and they are all blatantly violating it. I think the reason you can't find one is likely because you are disqualifying all the ones that aren't violating it. There a lots of websites that don't violate GDPR: they don't record any information. Perhaps we can quibble about server logs and whether or not IP addresses are PII, but let's stick to at least the broad strokes here since you are saying all sites blatantly violate GDPR. I think what you are probably trying to say is that amongst the websites that are trying to harvest your data, (virtually) all of them do so in a way that violates GDPR. This is not surprising to me, because at its heart GDPR is trying to encourage companies not to harvest personal information. I don't think we will ever get around that. The question is not whether or not many (most? virtually all?) companies will try to get around GDPR (they will). The question is whether or not GDPR will have an positive influence on the use of private data. I can say in the company I do work for, it has completely transformed how we deal with PII. We now actually have gatekeepers that tell marketing what they can and can't have access to. If there are problems, then people actually get chewed out and we put real, emergency resources into fixing them. I mean it is absolutely night and day. For us there is always this fight between people and departments that would like unrestricted access to information and people who are protecting it. Without GDPR, there was no defense! There was no argument you could make -- "It's wrong!" "By whose definition? The lawyers are fine with it" Now we can legitimately say, "You can't legally do that". Not only that, but I've even had marketing managers being very concerned that we might be handling data incorrectly. I've never, ever seen that before in my 30 year career. Yeah, there are lots of problems and I don't see them going away ever, but man GDPR is really helping in a lot of areas.