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Their explanation of the universal cookie ID issue is rather silly. If you're a client of Kissmetrics, your visitors have a cookie scoped to your domain with t

Their explanation of the universal cookie ID issue is rather silly. If you're a client of Kissmetrics, your visitors have a cookie scoped to your domain with the visitor's universal Kissmetrics ID. All of the database segregation in the world won't prevent any two or more Kissmetrics clients from collating visitor data on that universal ID, sent in every header on every pageview. Whether any clients are actually doing that, I have no clue. But claiming that permuting that universal ID into client-specific ones rendered when the clients view data actually protects visitors from said collation is just wrong. See Wired's screenshot here: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/07/Screen-Shot-2011-07-29-at-11.52.29-AM.png http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/07/Screen-S...

deleted 15y ago
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rubeng 15y ago
I don't see what's silly about the explanation considering it's about efficiency and performance. As a KISSmetrics customer I can tell you the focus is on funnels and key data; not on an internal cookie ID so that we can collude with other companies.
- rhizome 15y ago
  So you'd decline to collude with another company who approached you? What if they offered to pay?
  - rubeng 15y ago
    Of course not. Customer data isn't something I would ever share. Companies that choose to do so will do it regardless of whether they're directly paid for it. It's not a tech problem and it's not something they need a 3rd party vendor for.
moe 15y ago
Why would kissmetrics want to provide a way for their customers to link users by the means of that cookie id? To me this seems like an oversight rather than malicious intent.
- LokiSnake 15y ago
  But it's a huge oversight and the kind of thing the designers would have come across when designing the system. They decided to use the shared id, either with the assumption that no clients will ever collaborate and share data or they just don't take privacy seriously enough. Not necessarily malicious, but way too careless in privacy related matters.

deleted 15y ago

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rubeng 15y ago

I don't see what's silly about the explanation considering it's about efficiency and performance. As a KISSmetrics customer I can tell you the focus is on funnels and key data; not on an internal cookie ID so that we can collude with other companies.

rhizome 15y ago
So you'd decline to collude with another company who approached you? What if they offered to pay?
- rubeng 15y ago
  Of course not. Customer data isn't something I would ever share. Companies that choose to do so will do it regardless of whether they're directly paid for it. It's not a tech problem and it's not something they need a 3rd party vendor for.

moe 15y ago

Why would kissmetrics want to provide a way for their customers to link users by the means of that cookie id? To me this seems like an oversight rather than malicious intent.

LokiSnake 15y ago
But it's a huge oversight and the kind of thing the designers would have come across when designing the system. They decided to use the shared id, either with the assumption that no clients will ever collaborate and share data or they just don't take privacy seriously enough. Not necessarily malicious, but way too careless in privacy related matters.