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Am I missing something here? I understand the "The IAB loves tracking users." part of the title, but where is the part about "But it hates users tracking them."

Am I missing something here? I understand the "The IAB loves tracking users." part of the title, but where is the part about "But it hates users tracking them."? Based on the title, I would have expected an exception in their standard for themselves, or a story about how their own user tracking technology was used against them. However, there is none of that. Just that the IAB does not want to make it easier for users to escape their tracking (which, given their purpose, is unfortunately entirely expected). What justifies "But it hates users tracking them."?

edent 4y ago
It was a quicker way of me writing "but hates users being able to track what their members are doing with user data". The reason my email address for this site is `+ycombinator@...` is that I can track when dang decides to go rogue and sell my email to a Nigerian Prince. Think of it like sousveillance.
- rchaud 4y ago
  Have you ever received any spam addressed to that account? I've signed up for countless services over the past decade, the only ones to ever spam me were university consulting groups back from the time I was applying to grad school.
  - edent 4y ago
    Yes. I frequently find services which - either maliciously or through incompetence - allow my email to be used for 3rd party spam. Even some big companies aren't immune to a dodgy contractor walking off with a contact list.
rpdillon 4y ago
I suspect that part of the title is referring to the section that discusses using different email addresses for different services, so you can tell who sold your email address.
fluidcruft 4y ago
They don't want us to be able to see which websites are creeps and collaborators building secret dossiers on us.
mattcoles 4y ago
Let’s say you use a “plus” formatted email, I.e foo+github@gmail.com Then when you receive spam/unsolicited marketing emails, you can see to which email the spam was sent, and therefore which company sold your data. This suggests the only way to keep this behaviour is to have your own email hosted and use a truly different email per service.
phkahler 4y ago
>> What justifies "But it hates users tracking them."? Users can tell which site gave away their email address by using the variants discussed. It's not tracking in the same sense, but it does allow tracking who respects privacy. It also allows throwing away junk mail where someone required an email address just to (for example) make a sale or use their wifi.
didymospl 4y ago
The later part refers to the plus addressing, like "han.solo+github@gmail.com", which people use to so that "If they later start receiving spam to that address, they know the service has leaked or sold their info.". Now the IAB requests that advertisers should normalise such addresses by dropping the part after the plus sign, and therefore effectively stopping users from "tracking" the advertisers.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  This is dangerous as some mail servers could consider plus addresses unique.
  - arpa 4y ago
    nobody cares, email, along the majority of the internet as "computers talking protocols", is dead. The absolute majority of email is handled by gmail or microsoft, accounting for >80% of MX servers in the wild by the data i had five years back. I'd imagine the share of the duopoly is even larger today, considering how difficult it is to get into inbox these days.
    - account42 4y ago
      EMail is more alive than any other federated communication protocol on the internet. It is only rivaled by phones and physical mail. Defeatism here helps noone.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    (Web) developers have gotten lazier and simply don't care anymore. The fact of the matter is that if you don't host your email with one of the big three, some services are probably not working anyway. I'd also like websites to show me things like news and recipes without having them run javascript, but apparently this means I deserve white pages because writing HTML is too much of a hassle for the modern web developer. It's quite sad to see. It's also the reason I'm using somethingunique@domain.tld;, if cyberstalkers start normalising to a domain, they'll only hurt their own business.
Linosaurus 4y ago
> What justifies "But it hates users tracking them."? Nothing, I think, since there’s no indication the normalized email will be used to send email. The normalization is for connecting together identities against the wish of the user, which is a different issue.

edent 4y ago

It was a quicker way of me writing "but hates users being able to track what their members are doing with user data". The reason my email address for this site is `+ycombinator@...` is that I can track when dang decides to go rogue and sell my email to a Nigerian Prince. Think of it like sousveillance.

rchaud 4y ago
Have you ever received any spam addressed to that account? I've signed up for countless services over the past decade, the only ones to ever spam me were university consulting groups back from the time I was applying to grad school.
- edent 4y ago
  Yes. I frequently find services which - either maliciously or through incompetence - allow my email to be used for 3rd party spam. Even some big companies aren't immune to a dodgy contractor walking off with a contact list.

rpdillon 4y ago

I suspect that part of the title is referring to the section that discusses using different email addresses for different services, so you can tell who sold your email address.

fluidcruft 4y ago

They don't want us to be able to see which websites are creeps and collaborators building secret dossiers on us.

mattcoles 4y ago

Let’s say you use a “plus” formatted email, I.e foo+github@gmail.com Then when you receive spam/unsolicited marketing emails, you can see to which email the spam was sent, and therefore which company sold your data. This suggests the only way to keep this behaviour is to have your own email hosted and use a truly different email per service.

phkahler 4y ago

>> What justifies "But it hates users tracking them."? Users can tell which site gave away their email address by using the variants discussed. It's not tracking in the same sense, but it does allow tracking who respects privacy. It also allows throwing away junk mail where someone required an email address just to (for example) make a sale or use their wifi.

didymospl 4y ago

The later part refers to the plus addressing, like "han.solo+github@gmail.com", which people use to so that "If they later start receiving spam to that address, they know the service has leaked or sold their info.". Now the IAB requests that advertisers should normalise such addresses by dropping the part after the plus sign, and therefore effectively stopping users from "tracking" the advertisers.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
This is dangerous as some mail servers could consider plus addresses unique.
- arpa 4y ago
  nobody cares, email, along the majority of the internet as "computers talking protocols", is dead. The absolute majority of email is handled by gmail or microsoft, accounting for >80% of MX servers in the wild by the data i had five years back. I'd imagine the share of the duopoly is even larger today, considering how difficult it is to get into inbox these days.
  - account42 4y ago
    EMail is more alive than any other federated communication protocol on the internet. It is only rivaled by phones and physical mail. Defeatism here helps noone.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  (Web) developers have gotten lazier and simply don't care anymore. The fact of the matter is that if you don't host your email with one of the big three, some services are probably not working anyway. I'd also like websites to show me things like news and recipes without having them run javascript, but apparently this means I deserve white pages because writing HTML is too much of a hassle for the modern web developer. It's quite sad to see. It's also the reason I'm using somethingunique@domain.tld;, if cyberstalkers start normalising to a domain, they'll only hurt their own business.

Linosaurus 4y ago

> What justifies "But it hates users tracking them."? Nothing, I think, since there’s no indication the normalized email will be used to send email. The normalization is for connecting together identities against the wish of the user, which is a different issue.