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Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?
- sha256sum 5y agoProtip: if user privacy is a concern to you, then not supporting these companies (by handing them your data) is a good place to start.
- dehrmann 5y agoGood luck with that. The list of companies to avoid is pretty long.
- dave5104 5y agoAll you need to do is unplug your modem and you're good to go.
- Skunkleton 5y agoDon't drive into a mall parking lot, or use visa card, or ....
- Nextgrid 5y agoIf only it was that easy. The supermarket near me has a "data collection" notice about some tracking BS and to ask an associate for details and to opt-out (yes, as if the minimum-wage teenager would know anything about it, and how would the opt-out even work).
- dzmien 5y agoThe teenager making minimum wage would almost certainly summon a manager.
- dehrmann 5y agoCredit card companies sell your data, too. You basically have to use cash and not have a cell phone.
- ipaddr 5y agoYour list of companies is too short. Throw out the market leaders who spend on brand and cheat somewhere else in the chain and look for a smaller company.
- _8j50 5y agoNo. This needs to be criminalized. Not liking a good or service is one thing. Having things done to you or your information without consent for the purpose of spying on you is stalking with extra steps. Many of these companies still deprive you of your privacy even without using their services by developing shadow profiles on you.
- ipaddr 5y agoThis is an image that loads from a different host. Neither of these companies will create a shell profile if you never visit them. If they are criminal why would you use them?
- Retric 5y ago> If they are criminal why would you use them? People don’t give money to scammers because they know their scammers. It’s the same with privacy issues, people who don’t know what’s happening can’t make informed choices.
- notatoad 5y ago>people who don’t know what’s happening can’t make informed choices. it's really distasteful how privacy advocates always assume that everybody who doesn't feel the same way they do is uninformed. the average person has a basic understanding that companies keep track of them online. everybody who's spent more than five minutes online without an adblocker understands retargeting. it's not that people don't understand, it's that they don't care. telling people they're not informed enough to make their own decisions isn't going to convince them to start caring about the issue you care about.
- Nextgrid 5y agoThe fact that people suspect Facebook of outright listening to them (even when that's not the case) suggest people aren't fully aware of what data is collected, how it is used and how it can be misused. "Facebook listening to people" wouldn't be noteworthy if people weren't creeped out by it.
- Nextgrid 5y agoWell in this case data is collected and sent to various third-parties even without you willingly entering any data on the website manually.
- sha256sum 5y agoThe best bypass for this process is to cut Ubereats entirely out of the picture and call the local restaurant directly to place your order. Ubereats in this case is a third party so what difference does it make? None of you start to think about it.
- Nextgrid 5y agoBecause Uber Eats provides me some service that I value and I am happy for them to be part of the process as a result. TikTok, Facebook, Google, etc following me around provides me no value on the other hand - in fact, I have no account with any and would not see their ads even if I wanted to, so it's technically in their best interest to not waste processing power on stalking me.
- ComradePhil 5y agoNot handing your data to companies will result in poor data and bad decisions on their end, which is bad for them and the customers. What's super idiotic in all this is that the "data companies bad" is often spread by the very companies which would rather have data themselves than their competitors.
- user_named 5y agoBecause they run ads on TikTok
- _fat_santa 5y agoI'm no ads expert but my guess would be they run ads on TikTok and have the pixel on UberEats to figure out the conversion rate on those ads.
- qeternity 5y agoThis is the answer. I am surprised it's not routed through another pixel manager though.
- mosen 5y agoThey’re loading GTM at the top, so it was possibly triggered through that.
- dustymcp 5y agoYes this is a pixel to track audiences and retarget them when they are browsing tik tok, same goes for google, facebook and any other ads exchange.
- yashap 5y agoIt’s definitely this - details here: https://www.tiktokforbusinesseurope.com/resources/install-tiktok-pixel https://www.tiktokforbusinesseurope.com/resources/install-ti...
- samwillis 5y agoThis is it and is how the online advertising industry has worked for over 25 years. In its simplest form the pixel is used to attribute an ad view/click to a conversion event. At the beginning of the online ad industry that’s all it did, advertisers for the first time had the ability to directly, in real time, see the effectiveness of their ads. The economic value and GDP generated due to this innovation is immeasurable, the internet economy is literally built on it. At the beginning there was no profile building, combining with PII and data gathered from social media or even your gmail emails (yes the content of your emails). And it was magical! It’s the innovations since that have moved the entire industry through a grey area into the blank where the way they operate is questionable at best. The point is, this tracking pixel on its own is incredible what it unlocks. It’s the way that data is then used that we have to call into question. Personally the simplest form of attribution to me is fine. It works and I don’t believe it’s invasive if they aren’t then combining it with pii and profile data. Sadly that time has passed and all advertising networks now rely so heavily of ML/AI that it’s impossible to manage them, as an advertiser, in the way you used to. Hopefully regulation will push the industry back to where it was.
- sexy_panda 5y agoEven more concerning is Hotjar.
- Raed667 5y agoat least hotjar respects do-not-track settings
- LeonM 5y agoDNT is not the solution though. DNT status is not readable by JS (by design), so DNT cannot be implemented in the client. So all tracking calls are still made over the network. It is then up to the server processing those calls to drop them if the DNT header is present. Thus, there is no way for a user to verify that DNT is actually honored. Hotjar is probably the only one (claiming to be) honoring DNT consistently. Luckily Hotjar is a SaaS where the customer cannot influence this decision. But for all other tracking solutions, whenever marketeers are given the option, they will always choose to ignore DNT.
- Nextgrid 5y agoIf DNT is sent when loading the initial page it is totally possible to serve HTML that doesn't include the tracking scripts. If you load your tracking scripts you've already gone against your objective since even the initial HTTP request that loads the tracking library leaks the user's IP address and browser fingerprint back to the tracker. This is not a defense of DNT by the way - it has other problems such as the increased fingerprinting surface, etc.
- LeonM 5y agoYou are right, didn't think of that
- jstanley 5y ago> DNT status is not readable by JS (by design), so DNT cannot be implemented in the client. But the JS is served by a server, which can read the DNT header, so why can't it just write different JS based on the content of the header? It can be as simple as writing "let do_not_track = true;" if the header is present.
- uhtred 5y agoUsing a browser add on like Privacy Badger should block that.
- dvt 5y agoAs someone that has spent a sizable amount of my career in ad products, the outrage here is kind of (sadly) funny. A conversion pixel? Hah, if you only had an idea of what the Facebook data faucet looked like in 2007-2017, your hairs would stand. Pretty sure they were breaking all kinds of PII laws.
- arkitaip 5y ago"I don't know why you are upset that I'm stabbing you when I've been poisoning your all these years ha ha ha".
- wy35 5y agoNot really accurate analogy. More like “you’re only finding out today that I’ve been poisoning you the entire time?”
- mtgx 5y agoIn other words, victim blaming.
- refulgentis 5y agoNo. Lol.
- bhch 5y agopedantic
- tentacleuno 5y agoThe amount of client-side JavaScript code that inconspicuous Like button loads is unnerving.
- calvinmorrison 5y agoDoesn't matter much. Now it'll just happen server side where the server sends the same types of data directly to facebook. See the facebook CAPI. Basically a server side implementation of DataLayer and such...
- tonymet 5y agoit allows uber eats to build custom audiences and track conversion rates . welcome to ad tech ca 1998
- boring_twenties 5y agoI don't get this. Nothing about tiktok in the Network debugger, nor in uBlock or NoScript for that matter.
- Nextgrid 5y agoI bet it's loaded by Google Tag Manager which acts as a "dropper" to load further malware. If you block that (which I assume you do if you have uBlock Origin) you don't get to see the rest.
- boring_twenties 5y agoAh yes I certainly do block that.
- rosndo 5y ago
- tester756 5y agobing and yahoo.co.jp are interesting
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y agoAs one can see from comments on HN, it bothers some website developers when these basic tactics are openly discussed. The user gets no choice over whether her data is shared, or with whom it is shared. The expectation appears to be that no one will ever complain, whether for the first time or on a consistent basis. Perhaps there is a belief that if a certain amount of time passes without any complaints, this signifies a common "ad tech" practice is acceptable to the general population, and passes any sort of ethical, regulatory or legal analysis. A sort of "waiver". Silence equals acceptance. "Everyone else was doing it, so therefore we in particular are not guilty of any wrongdoing." Perhaps some folks think that is a good defense.
- beckman466 5y ago> As one can see from comments on HN, it bothers some website developers when these basic tactics are openly discussed. no in this case i think this post has everything to do with OP believing that this pixel tracking by a non-American/non-Western firm (in this case Chinese) is somehow less kosher compared to tracking by Silicon Valley social media platforms/firms (who, as others have pointed out, use exactly the same tools/strategies).
- topaz0 5y agoThat may have been the case for the original poster, but the discussion has been about tracking generally.
- tentacleuno 5y agoThe amount of tracking on this page is astounding. Just from the screenshot, I count 9 trackers: Uber Eats' own analytics sc-static.net (Snapchat? whois doesn't reveal anything.) Google Tag Manager Facebook Connect Yahoo TikTok ispot.tv (Some sort of ad management solution.) Hotjar (Behavioural analytics.) Bing
- charcircuit 5y agoYes sc-static.net is snapchat
- mabbo 5y agoThis is honestly very few considering how many different places Uber Eats probably advertises on. I work on helping new Shopify merchants get more early sales, and ads are super important for that to happen. Open up any small and growing e-commerce store and you'll see at least this many. Without ads, you don't find these small businesses, and all consumers just go to Amazon, or other large established marketplaces.
- medion 5y agoNot on the main topic, but is there a way I can get in touch to discuss how you might be able to help us and our Shopify shop?
- pc86 5y agoFrom their profile it looks as if they work at Shopify, so probably just through the generic contact page would get you to at least the right department.
- jon9544hn 5y agoSame!
- mabbo 5y agoIt's a hard topic. My team mostly does experiments, A/B tests on new merchants to see what nudges leads to better results overall. The reality is we have a lot of ideas and we're trying to get data to figure out those answers. But we don't truly know yet. The hard part (as far as I can tell) is product market fit and finding your customer base. Once that's established, you have some momentum, leading to repeat customers and lower acquisition costs. IE: once an ad network has some existing customers to build a model on, it's cheaper to target ads on similar customers. But that initial part is very hard. New privacy rules, like Apple's changes, are a good thing generally, but they make it more expensive for small businesses to acquire initial customers because ads are less effective, so you have to pay for more of them to find your customers. That gives Amazon (and other established competition) a massive advantage. They know everyone deeply and can target everywhere very precisely. I've heard that the Shopify subreddits are well liked by merchants. Good info there. There's also the Gurus that can provide some support for free, as well as you can hire an 'Expert' through Shopify to get even more help. All this is to say the most groan-inducing phrase in business: you've got to spend more to make more. And there's no guarantee that you'll earn it back because business is hard.
- Ekaros 5y agoJust in general look at those cookie consent dialogs at any site living on advertising or using it and really see the insanity of number of partners... That should show that we might actually need to burn it all down...
- Moru 5y agoJust install uBlock on your friends and families browsers. Most people seems fine with being tracked if that means they get "offers" they don't want to miss. I however detest anything connected to advertisement to the level that I frequently hang up when our own sales people call me because I directly spot a salesperson, even before I recognize the voice... Quite embarrasing sometimes :-) So I install uBlock, uMatrix and Pi-hole everywhere. Also help customers do the same with sane defaults so they get rid of most stuff without burning their whole browser. And as an advertiser we don't have to pay for the people that didn't want to see our ads in the first place, win win loose :-)
- zero_k 5y agoPeople here talking about PII reminds me every day that we still haven't grasped what Personal Data is, and how incredibly different it is from PII. Ah, sad.
- soared 5y agoOP is going to have a heart attack when they install ghostery.
- ink_13 5y agoIs Ghostery still worth installing these days?
- dionian 5y agoStuff like this is why I try to use umatrix style filtering wherever possible
- yawnxyz 5y agoSomewhat unrelatedly, just "innocently" embedding a tweet on a site adds a TON of trackers from Twitter. It's really unfortunate
- Ourgon 5y agoThe answer to this is the same as to all similar questions: why are you not blocking third-party content by default? To which the reaction tends to be that this is too difficult/too much hassle/should not be necessary. No, it should not be necessary just like locking your door should be necessary. Unfortunately, it is. By the way, in this specific case another answer is "UberEats? Learn To Cook™!"
- derimagia 5y agoLooks blocked to me.
- calrueb 5y agoAs many people have pointed out these are for tracking the performance of ad traffic. Savvy, "privacy minded" businesses may listen to this sort of outrage, and pull the pixels off their websites. But you are kidding yourself if you think you aren't being tracked because the frontend JS is all first party. The same thing can, and is happening server side. Every platform out there now has an event/conversion API [1]. If you are logging in to Uber Eats with a email/phone number you have used elsewhere then you are going to be tracked full-stop. 1. Here is TikTok's for example https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article?aid=10003669 https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article?aid=10003669
- sdeframond 5y agoIs it a good time and place to mention Tracker Control ? https://trackercontrol.org/ https://trackercontrol.org/
- 45ure 5y agoI don't know why this doesn't get as much love as it deserves. It is a bit of a pain to use, however, using it becomes second nature after a while, just like uMatrix for the browser originally had a learning curve associated with it. Although no longer actively maintained by gorhill -- it is still a staple in my toolbox, as is TrackerControl for Android.
- divbzero 5y ago38.9 kB of JavaScript is a very generous interpretation of ‘pixel’. Interestingly, it only loads after you agree to third party cookies by clicking “Got it”. So I guess they at least respect that.
- bogota 5y agoWhy is this title allowed?
- y3sh 5y agoAt a quick glance it seems rather easy for tiktok to slip in whatever it wants in that source from time to time. Is this the status quo for third party cookies?
- marrone12 5y agoYes. You link to a random 3rd party javascript, which they could change what it loads at any point.
- chmod775 5y agoAnything that tracking pixel does could also have been done server side, with users none-the-wiser. Unless of course they list the (likely hundreds of) companies they're sharing data with in a dreaded GDPR "cookie banner".
- ngcc_hk 5y agoThe bigger picture is world technology can be used by china but china can refuse the world. Dump TikTok and save the world.
- freemint 5y agohttps://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-ghost-kitchens-launch-viral-food-trends-2021-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-ghost-kitchens-launch... Might be an answer.
- blindmute 5y agoI used to be extremely privacy focused. I was the stereotypical noscript, don't load email remote content, all services off on phone, etc kind of guy. But recently at a certain point, I just stopped caring. I use ad blockers, so what harm is there to Google knowing my information? I don't really have any information worth hiding. Even the worst case catostrophic leak scenarios are really not a big deal for me. So I just decided to stop making my life harder; I got a smartphone, I turned on the convenience services that track me, I started looking at pictures in my emails. I still think privacy is important, but I stopped caring about mine.
- Antwan 5y agoUberEats uses Tiktok ads to promote their product, this is used to track conversions. I missed the part where this is shocking.