4 ms·

From an honest privacy advocate: what makes you feel you have the right to be able to? Why do you think end-users install things like "uBlock Origin", or why d

by hnarn 5y ago

From an honest privacy advocate: what makes you feel you have the right to be able to? Why do you think end-users install things like "uBlock Origin", or why do smartphone manufacturers like Apple introduce features like random MAC address generation when connecting to wireless networks? Why do people use VPNs in the first place? Because data points are being collected without our consent to profile us, and most of us do not want that. The type of differentiation you are talking about by definition lacks consent, because if you had consent it would be trivial, you could do it by cookies or other forms of identification that the user consented to.

giantrobot 5y ago
Look I'm just trying to find the best way to stealthily install cameras in every bedroom of someone's house. It's just so I can track their every movement and sell their intimate details to completely unrelated third parties. They're only going to compile all that data to psychologically abuse those people until they spend money! Is that so wrong‽
- lsaferite 5y ago
  Hyperbole does nothing to genuinely further a discussion here.
dylan604 5y ago
I'm a huge privacy advocate, so I'm not trying to do anything nefarious. However, I would like to know if my per visitor type numbers are accurate. As a small business, these numbers are useful even without having any desire of removing anonymity. There's a huge difference from wanting to tracking users and just know the correct number of people visiting. How can you honestly not think that knowing an accurate count of visitors is a useful metric?
- svnpenn 5y ago
  > I'm a huge privacy advocate Your previous comment directly contradicts this. People who advocate for privacy, don't go out of their way to harvest data without consent.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Again, I'm not harvesting data. I'm attempting to make the most information from access_log possible. I include not tracking pixels, no 3rd party analytics, no fingerprinting, no anything other than just getting information about what pages were loaded. It would be nice to know that all of the traffic from a specific IP is a prolific user or several users from a VPN/shared access location. I don't care who/what you are. Everyone jumps to the conclusion that just because someone is parsing a log means <evil> and that is not necessarily always true. Some of us want to respect user privacy but at least have a general idea of the number of people visiting a site.
    - nickphx 5y ago
      With a simple blank image referenced in the page returned by a URL unique per user / session?
- mhitza 5y ago
  When you're dealing with small visitor numbers individual user tracking might seem very important. However, aggregate behavior is more insightful as it also smooths out outliers. Eg. 3% of all iPhone users traffic reach goal X every month; versus, this 1 user that visited the site 25 times in the last six months, 3 times through a VPN, 17 times from public, open access Wi-Fi, 5 times from a different country, reached goal X after spending 27 seconds on page Y. The first one is directly actionable insight. Increase your reach to iPhone users, as more iPhone traffic leads to bigger conversion numbers. While the later doesn't lead directly to any actionable insight, but a bunch of theory crafting, while stripping away any form of privacy (and being a juicy target for intelligence agencies and hackers). Now, that is of course my opinion. Having touched projects that had collected both "lightweight" analytics data, and everything the user touches. I'm sure the later could lead to more experimentation, but in the context of that project it amounted to just hoarding. Instead, for other types of actionable insight I would suggest surveying converted users. Of course there can be selection bias, and unless the UI is done right can be obtrusive UX. This is the exact information more data would help you answer (in theory), but rather than asking the user you're trying to read their minds by tracking everything about them. At least, again, my opinion based on experience.

by hnarn 5y ago

giantrobot 5y ago

Look I'm just trying to find the best way to stealthily install cameras in every bedroom of someone's house. It's just so I can track their every movement and sell their intimate details to completely unrelated third parties. They're only going to compile all that data to psychologically abuse those people until they spend money! Is that so wrong‽

lsaferite 5y ago
Hyperbole does nothing to genuinely further a discussion here.

dylan604 5y ago

I'm a huge privacy advocate, so I'm not trying to do anything nefarious. However, I would like to know if my per visitor type numbers are accurate. As a small business, these numbers are useful even without having any desire of removing anonymity. There's a huge difference from wanting to tracking users and just know the correct number of people visiting. How can you honestly not think that knowing an accurate count of visitors is a useful metric?

svnpenn 5y ago
> I'm a huge privacy advocate Your previous comment directly contradicts this. People who advocate for privacy, don't go out of their way to harvest data without consent.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Again, I'm not harvesting data. I'm attempting to make the most information from access_log possible. I include not tracking pixels, no 3rd party analytics, no fingerprinting, no anything other than just getting information about what pages were loaded. It would be nice to know that all of the traffic from a specific IP is a prolific user or several users from a VPN/shared access location. I don't care who/what you are. Everyone jumps to the conclusion that just because someone is parsing a log means <evil> and that is not necessarily always true. Some of us want to respect user privacy but at least have a general idea of the number of people visiting a site.
  - nickphx 5y ago
    With a simple blank image referenced in the page returned by a URL unique per user / session?
mhitza 5y ago
When you're dealing with small visitor numbers individual user tracking might seem very important. However, aggregate behavior is more insightful as it also smooths out outliers. Eg. 3% of all iPhone users traffic reach goal X every month; versus, this 1 user that visited the site 25 times in the last six months, 3 times through a VPN, 17 times from public, open access Wi-Fi, 5 times from a different country, reached goal X after spending 27 seconds on page Y. The first one is directly actionable insight. Increase your reach to iPhone users, as more iPhone traffic leads to bigger conversion numbers. While the later doesn't lead directly to any actionable insight, but a bunch of theory crafting, while stripping away any form of privacy (and being a juicy target for intelligence agencies and hackers). Now, that is of course my opinion. Having touched projects that had collected both "lightweight" analytics data, and everything the user touches. I'm sure the later could lead to more experimentation, but in the context of that project it amounted to just hoarding. Instead, for other types of actionable insight I would suggest surveying converted users. Of course there can be selection bias, and unless the UI is done right can be obtrusive UX. This is the exact information more data would help you answer (in theory), but rather than asking the user you're trying to read their minds by tracking everything about them. At least, again, my opinion based on experience.