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You put a spotlight by saying "privacy and security focused alternative to segment" Are there things you believe make segment not privacy and security focused?

You put a spotlight by saying "privacy and security focused alternative to segment" Are there things you believe make segment not privacy and security focused? As a long time user of segment, I find their protocols feature and new data and privacy features world class for this. Having also just left their Synapse conference, privacy and security was the #1 topic of discussion throughout the conference. I would say they are very much privacy and security focused. Not trying to shill, but it comes off as maybe you are misrepresenting segment a little bit. "Open source segment alternative" would have probably been just fine.

soumyadeb 7y ago
We started this before segment launched the privacy tool so yes that was a good validation of the pain point. However, unlike segment we don't require you to send all your events to us. You are welcome to download and run the software yourself without ever talking to us. We believe, having to send everything to a 3rd party (segment) goes against the fundamental goal of guaranteeing user privacy.
colordrops 7y ago
The author responded to you, but I think this deserves emphasis. True privacy is not about additional features or promises made by a cloud provider. It's not private unless you handle the data yourself, period point blank. This should be obvious.
- LittlePeter 7y ago
  The entire point of using Segment is not their data transformation SDKs. AFAIK these are open source anyway. It is the managed infrastructure. Outage? You can keep sleeping. Google Analytics deprecating their API for a new one? Segment's on it. The have all your data. They can replay all events from beginning if needed (so they say, never had to ask for this).
  - soumyadeb 7y ago
    BTW, event replaying is coming in 2 weeks with Rudder :) Also, we are developing extensive test suites to check for API depreciations etc. That was one of the reasons we picked JS for our transformations - shipping an update would be easy. Infra outage - sure but you probably have a prod infra to manage anyway so why not one more piece. No doubt segment is a great product and there will always be folks who want its simplicity. However, at some scale companies should take privacy of their user data seriously.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    > It is the managed infrastructure. Outage? You can keep sleeping. I don't think an outage in a third party service I've depended on has ever allowed me to keep sleeping. In reality, I've been awake, dealing with outage fallout, keeping up to date on status updates, and overall just feeling in the dark, unable to improve the situation for my customers. That's not saying that depending on a third party service isn't sometimes the right move, but "I get to sleep when there's a problem" isn't a consideration there. The pager still goes off.

soumyadeb 7y ago

We started this before segment launched the privacy tool so yes that was a good validation of the pain point. However, unlike segment we don't require you to send all your events to us. You are welcome to download and run the software yourself without ever talking to us. We believe, having to send everything to a 3rd party (segment) goes against the fundamental goal of guaranteeing user privacy.

colordrops 7y ago

The author responded to you, but I think this deserves emphasis. True privacy is not about additional features or promises made by a cloud provider. It's not private unless you handle the data yourself, period point blank. This should be obvious.

LittlePeter 7y ago
The entire point of using Segment is not their data transformation SDKs. AFAIK these are open source anyway. It is the managed infrastructure. Outage? You can keep sleeping. Google Analytics deprecating their API for a new one? Segment's on it. The have all your data. They can replay all events from beginning if needed (so they say, never had to ask for this).
- soumyadeb 7y ago
  BTW, event replaying is coming in 2 weeks with Rudder :) Also, we are developing extensive test suites to check for API depreciations etc. That was one of the reasons we picked JS for our transformations - shipping an update would be easy. Infra outage - sure but you probably have a prod infra to manage anyway so why not one more piece. No doubt segment is a great product and there will always be folks who want its simplicity. However, at some scale companies should take privacy of their user data seriously.
- kelnos 7y ago
  > It is the managed infrastructure. Outage? You can keep sleeping. I don't think an outage in a third party service I've depended on has ever allowed me to keep sleeping. In reality, I've been awake, dealing with outage fallout, keeping up to date on status updates, and overall just feeling in the dark, unable to improve the situation for my customers. That's not saying that depending on a third party service isn't sometimes the right move, but "I get to sleep when there's a problem" isn't a consideration there. The pager still goes off.