4 ms·

Am I the only one who thinks it's creepy that the largest advertising company in the world, and particularly one based outside the country, has so much data on

Am I the only one who thinks it's creepy that the largest advertising company in the world, and particularly one based outside the country, has so much data on what UK citizens access on their own government websites for health, tax, social welfare information etc?

paxys 6y ago
It should all be public information in the first place.
- alexmcc81 6y ago
  General statistics on site usage would be interesting. But what about all the other data that could be extracted, both on a personal and national level? You could, for example, determine which areas are more likely to access HIV information on the NHS website. Insurance companies would like that but would it benefit the public or be in line with people's basic privacy expectations for government services? (I'm sure Google claim that they won't add a user looking at cancer information on the NHS site to their data profile but I wonder what other insights could be generated.)
  - DanBC 6y ago
    > determine which areas are more likely to access HIV information on the NHS website We can already do this. Have a look at the Public Health England "Fingertips" website. https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/ https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/ https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/sexualhealth https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/sexualhealth https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/sexualhealth/data#page/0/gid/1938133286/pat/6/par/E12000004/ati/202/are/E06000015/cid/4/page-options/ovw-do-0 https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/sexualhealth/data#page...
- dastx 6y ago
  Not really, it will include who is accessing this data, which can be used to infer information on UK citizens.
- cbaines 6y ago
  Some analytics information is public, if you know where to look. You can add /info to the start of the URL path, and that might reveal some information about the page. For example: https://www.gov.uk/info/find-coronavirus-local-restrictions https://www.gov.uk/info/find-coronavirus-local-restrictions
  - DangerousPie 6y ago
    That's very cool, I had no idea! How did you find this?
    - cbaines 6y ago
      A while back, I worked on the code https://github.com/alphagov/info-frontend https://github.com/alphagov/info-frontend
      - DangerousPie 6y ago
        Nice! Do you know if historic data is available somewhere too? Or is it always just the last 6-weeks?
- antpls 6y ago
  USA has a dedicated website : https://analytics.usa.gov/ https://analytics.usa.gov/ I don't know if the data is from GA or a custom made solution
noncoml 6y ago
Governmental sites should have everything self-hosted. No Google Analytics, no CDN, no nothing. Just like they shouldn't have presence in Private Social Media Networks. But that's my opinion.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  >no CDN Then the website would have burned to the ground during this announcement.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - eznzt 6y ago
    Not if they had enough servers and bandwidth.
    - Narkov 6y ago
      This is an inefficient use of government money to in-source everything. If private industry can do something cheaper and more effective, use common sense.
      - dopylitty 6y ago
        Private industry by definition can't do something cheaper and more effectively because its goal is to make money, not to make a quality or cheap product.
        CydeWeys 6y ago
        Let's imagine that I had to make a website that could host a million concurrent users once per year. What do you think is cheaper, me acquiring all of the hardware to scale to a million users and then leaving it idle 99.9% of the time, or outsource handling that peak traffic to someone who's already operating at the scale for it? The UK government does not remotely need the same year-round capacity as a top-tier CDN.
cbaines 6y ago
This having Google track your users has impacts internally when your own tooling becomes even less accurate because you have to start asking for consent: https://github.com/alphagov/content-data-admin/pull/707 https://github.com/alphagov/content-data-admin/pull/707 In the case of things like page views, this is something addressable by just gathering the data yourself. If you put in the effort up front, it'll be more accurate than Google (as you don't miss anyone who Google misses).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
harel 6y ago
They don't. The data is anonymous, and no user tracking is used

paxys 6y ago

It should all be public information in the first place.

alexmcc81 6y ago
General statistics on site usage would be interesting. But what about all the other data that could be extracted, both on a personal and national level? You could, for example, determine which areas are more likely to access HIV information on the NHS website. Insurance companies would like that but would it benefit the public or be in line with people's basic privacy expectations for government services? (I'm sure Google claim that they won't add a user looking at cancer information on the NHS site to their data profile but I wonder what other insights could be generated.)
- DanBC 6y ago
  > determine which areas are more likely to access HIV information on the NHS website We can already do this. Have a look at the Public Health England "Fingertips" website. https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/ https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/ https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/sexualhealth https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/sexualhealth https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/sexualhealth/data#page/0/gid/1938133286/pat/6/par/E12000004/ati/202/are/E06000015/cid/4/page-options/ovw-do-0 https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/sexualhealth/data#page...
dastx 6y ago
Not really, it will include who is accessing this data, which can be used to infer information on UK citizens.
cbaines 6y ago
Some analytics information is public, if you know where to look. You can add /info to the start of the URL path, and that might reveal some information about the page. For example: https://www.gov.uk/info/find-coronavirus-local-restrictions https://www.gov.uk/info/find-coronavirus-local-restrictions
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  That's very cool, I had no idea! How did you find this?
  - cbaines 6y ago
    A while back, I worked on the code https://github.com/alphagov/info-frontend https://github.com/alphagov/info-frontend
    - DangerousPie 6y ago
      Nice! Do you know if historic data is available somewhere too? Or is it always just the last 6-weeks?
antpls 6y ago
USA has a dedicated website : https://analytics.usa.gov/ https://analytics.usa.gov/ I don't know if the data is from GA or a custom made solution

noncoml 6y ago

Governmental sites should have everything self-hosted. No Google Analytics, no CDN, no nothing. Just like they shouldn't have presence in Private Social Media Networks. But that's my opinion.

marcinzm 6y ago
>no CDN Then the website would have burned to the ground during this announcement.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- eznzt 6y ago
  Not if they had enough servers and bandwidth.
  - Narkov 6y ago
    This is an inefficient use of government money to in-source everything. If private industry can do something cheaper and more effective, use common sense.
    - dopylitty 6y ago
      Private industry by definition can't do something cheaper and more effectively because its goal is to make money, not to make a quality or cheap product.
      - CydeWeys 6y ago
        Let's imagine that I had to make a website that could host a million concurrent users once per year. What do you think is cheaper, me acquiring all of the hardware to scale to a million users and then leaving it idle 99.9% of the time, or outsource handling that peak traffic to someone who's already operating at the scale for it? The UK government does not remotely need the same year-round capacity as a top-tier CDN.

cbaines 6y ago

This having Google track your users has impacts internally when your own tooling becomes even less accurate because you have to start asking for consent: https://github.com/alphagov/content-data-admin/pull/707 https://github.com/alphagov/content-data-admin/pull/707 In the case of things like page views, this is something addressable by just gathering the data yourself. If you put in the effort up front, it'll be more accurate than Google (as you don't miss anyone who Google misses).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

harel 6y ago

They don't. The data is anonymous, and no user tracking is used