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There a point here which seems to have been missed. From the study's FAQ: > The set of websites for this study is sampled from the Tranco list of popular websi

There a point here which seems to have been missed. From the study's FAQ: > The set of websites for this study is sampled from the Tranco list of popular websites and publicly available datasets of third-party tracking websites. If that's true, then I have a lot more sympathy for the researchers: it seems they were only targeting particularly popular sites, and sites which use tracking technology. Those sites really should have have developed processes for responding to GDPR and CCPA requests, rather than just banging in some Google Analytics code without really thinking about it.

iudqnolq 5y ago
That's because people are reporting that's incorrect. A commentator on HN got one sent to their personal domain they use only for email https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29600542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29600542
kstrauser 5y ago
I looked up my own site — the one that got this whole mess started — and I hover around number 350,000. I was utterly shocked given that I have a few thousand users, and many fewer active users. I don’t use GA, or any other third-party trackers, on any of my sites. Given that Tranco doesn’t have access to my web logs or the little Matomo setup that I self-host, I’m not sure how they claim to be analyzing my traffic in the first place.
- gnfargbl 5y ago
  Thanks for that -- seems like you're a pretty good counterexample to my hypothesis. Totally agree that sending these emails to site #350,000 on the Tranco list isn't justifiable. > I’m not sure how they claim to be analyzing my traffic in the first place They wouldn't need to analyze your traffic to find out if you were using tracking technologies, they would just need to visit your site and examine what they were served. Companies like BuiltWith and Wappalyzer offer this kind of technology survey as a service.
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    I mean, I'm not sure how Tranco would get those traffic numbers, since I'm not sharing traffic data with anyone. All of my analytics are within my own system.
    - gnfargbl 5y ago
      Tranco is a merge of the Alexa, Cisco Umbrella and Majestic lists. Alexa data is gathered from a browser extension [1], Cisco Umbrella is passive DNS [2]. Not totally sure about Majestic but it looks like it might be crawling of some kind, then counting links. [1] https://kinsta.com/blog/alexa-rank/#how-is-alexa-rank-calculated https://kinsta.com/blog/alexa-rank/#how-is-alexa-rank-calcul... [2] https://umbrella-static.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/index.html https://umbrella-static.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/index.htm...

iudqnolq 5y ago

That's because people are reporting that's incorrect. A commentator on HN got one sent to their personal domain they use only for email https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29600542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29600542

kstrauser 5y ago

I looked up my own site — the one that got this whole mess started — and I hover around number 350,000. I was utterly shocked given that I have a few thousand users, and many fewer active users. I don’t use GA, or any other third-party trackers, on any of my sites. Given that Tranco doesn’t have access to my web logs or the little Matomo setup that I self-host, I’m not sure how they claim to be analyzing my traffic in the first place.

gnfargbl 5y ago
Thanks for that -- seems like you're a pretty good counterexample to my hypothesis. Totally agree that sending these emails to site #350,000 on the Tranco list isn't justifiable. > I’m not sure how they claim to be analyzing my traffic in the first place They wouldn't need to analyze your traffic to find out if you were using tracking technologies, they would just need to visit your site and examine what they were served. Companies like BuiltWith and Wappalyzer offer this kind of technology survey as a service.
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I mean, I'm not sure how Tranco would get those traffic numbers, since I'm not sharing traffic data with anyone. All of my analytics are within my own system.
  - gnfargbl 5y ago
    Tranco is a merge of the Alexa, Cisco Umbrella and Majestic lists. Alexa data is gathered from a browser extension [1], Cisco Umbrella is passive DNS [2]. Not totally sure about Majestic but it looks like it might be crawling of some kind, then counting links. [1] https://kinsta.com/blog/alexa-rank/#how-is-alexa-rank-calculated https://kinsta.com/blog/alexa-rank/#how-is-alexa-rank-calcul... [2] https://umbrella-static.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/index.html https://umbrella-static.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/index.htm...