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Plausible literally provides a toggle to make it public in their UI: https://plausible.io/docs/visibility https://plausible.io/docs/visibility Sure, someone co

Plausible literally provides a toggle to make it public in their UI: https://plausible.io/docs/visibility https://plausible.io/docs/visibility Sure, someone could send out unique links to random `utm_campaign` IDs and see "did the person click it?" and I agree that's a bit nasty. But even if you do convince someone to click _your_ link, what good does that do? We can see you yourself clicked that link from Germany on a mobile phone, and that's literally it. We can't get your IP address, or any PII - it's not stored. You were able to verify what level of information my site is collecting *because* it is public. That is simply better than me spying and recording everything you do and you just having to "hope I never accidentally release it or sell it to someone" as is the case with modern tracking.

hobofan 6y ago
> Germany on a mobile phone, and that's literally it Yes, and _that's it_! Just by getting someone to click on a site they find trustworthy, you are now able to extract country, device, browser, OS, time of access, and to some degree other pages visited on the website. This in itself may not be PII, but together with previously known data points may be enough to assemble PII. > Plausible literally provides a toggle to make it public in their UI: https://plausible.io/docs/visibility https://plausible.io/docs/visibility Yeah, and I don't think that's a good idea that they do without any warning of the implications. If they make it easy to expose data publicly, there should at least be some measures to ensure anonymity like e.g. differential privacy based querying. For a product that markets themselves as GDPR compliant and without cross-site tracking (which this technique enables to a certain degree), that's not really a great look. > You were able to verify what level of information my site is collecting because it is public. I mean kinda, but not really. I have no assurance the "all the data you are showing me" == "all the data you have about me". In the end I still have to trust you that you don't collect more data and that you won't sell that data to someone else. ----- All in all, I really appreciate what you are trying to do here in terms of transparency, and I'd like to see that spread. However I think there is still a lot of room for tools to improve to provide a similar level of transparency while also insuring users privacy.
- sammax 6y ago
  > Yes, and _that's it_! Just by getting someone to click on a site they find trustworthy, you are now able to extract country, device, browser, OS, time of access So you'd be using this as an overly complex IP geolocation lookup and UA header parser? All of this information is either already known to you when you trick someone to click on that link (because they are on your website so you get the same data) or can instead be obtained by tricking them into clicking on a link to your website instead of that one (if it's an email for example).
  - hobofan 6y ago
    > because they are on your website so you get the same data Or you provide the link via any social media website, or email, etc.. > or can instead be obtained by tricking them into clicking on a link to your website instead of that one The target may feel much safer clicking a link to knowntrustedsite.abc than yourunknownphisysite.xyz
    - sammax 6y ago
      > The target may feel much safer clicking a link to knowntrustedsite.abc than yourunknownphisysite.xyz Big doubt honestly, at least for the vast majority of people. Just set up some blog with some contest that interests them (can be copied from other blogs) and they're not gonna suspect a thing. People might notice if you pretend to be their bank but are actually a phishing site, but they don't notice if you pretend to be a blog and are actually a blog that harvests their data just like any other website.

hobofan 6y ago

> Germany on a mobile phone, and that's literally it Yes, and _that's it_! Just by getting someone to click on a site they find trustworthy, you are now able to extract country, device, browser, OS, time of access, and to some degree other pages visited on the website. This in itself may not be PII, but together with previously known data points may be enough to assemble PII. > Plausible literally provides a toggle to make it public in their UI: https://plausible.io/docs/visibility https://plausible.io/docs/visibility Yeah, and I don't think that's a good idea that they do without any warning of the implications. If they make it easy to expose data publicly, there should at least be some measures to ensure anonymity like e.g. differential privacy based querying. For a product that markets themselves as GDPR compliant and without cross-site tracking (which this technique enables to a certain degree), that's not really a great look. > You were able to verify what level of information my site is collecting because it is public. I mean kinda, but not really. I have no assurance the "all the data you are showing me" == "all the data you have about me". In the end I still have to trust you that you don't collect more data and that you won't sell that data to someone else. ----- All in all, I really appreciate what you are trying to do here in terms of transparency, and I'd like to see that spread. However I think there is still a lot of room for tools to improve to provide a similar level of transparency while also insuring users privacy.

sammax 6y ago
> Yes, and _that's it_! Just by getting someone to click on a site they find trustworthy, you are now able to extract country, device, browser, OS, time of access So you'd be using this as an overly complex IP geolocation lookup and UA header parser? All of this information is either already known to you when you trick someone to click on that link (because they are on your website so you get the same data) or can instead be obtained by tricking them into clicking on a link to your website instead of that one (if it's an email for example).
- hobofan 6y ago
  > because they are on your website so you get the same data Or you provide the link via any social media website, or email, etc.. > or can instead be obtained by tricking them into clicking on a link to your website instead of that one The target may feel much safer clicking a link to knowntrustedsite.abc than yourunknownphisysite.xyz
  - sammax 6y ago
    > The target may feel much safer clicking a link to knowntrustedsite.abc than yourunknownphisysite.xyz Big doubt honestly, at least for the vast majority of people. Just set up some blog with some contest that interests them (can be copied from other blogs) and they're not gonna suspect a thing. People might notice if you pretend to be their bank but are actually a phishing site, but they don't notice if you pretend to be a blog and are actually a blog that harvests their data just like any other website.