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> Is it really anonymous? > Yes! We will never give away any of your information. For starters, they're leaking this information to Google. After that, they'
by neilv 2y ago
> Is it really anonymous?
> Yes! We will never give away any of your information.
For starters, they're leaking this information to Google.
After that, they're presumably subject to subpoenas. And they or an acquirer altering the agreement. And there's interpretations of "give away". And the inevitable data breaches.
I see no identification of who runs it, which doesn't seem consistent with their stated philosophy of "transparency and accountability", and might affect users' ability to hold them to their privacy assurances.
- EGreg 2y ago“I see no identification of who runs it” Sounds like it’s anonymous to me :) That’s how governments like to run things: https://community.qbix.com/t/transparency-in-government/234 https://community.qbix.com/t/transparency-in-government/234
- 20240519 2y agoEven if there is no information given away there is an address published so the landlord and probably government can guess who you are.
- ZhadruOmjar 2y agoHow anonymous can it be? Sure, if you were dealing with a city-wide management company they can keep it somewhat anonymous but saying "John Smith, landlord at 123 Fake St" with the review on a set date is a pretty good indication of who left the review. Even for management companies it would not take a lot of investigation to find the reviewer.
- bsza 2y agoFor starters, they could hash every address with bcrypt and only show reviews to people who search for that exact address. Then they could hide the review pages from search engines (which they are currently not [0] doing). They also have no good reason to include the exact date beyond maybe the year, and even then they should let the user change it if they want to (haven’t checked if they do). None of this would make the site lose its primary function, which is by their own admission to do a background check on the landlord you’re about to sign an agreement with. [0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=Aberdeen+St%2C+Chicago%2C+IL+60607+US+site%3Amichelleslist.com https://www.google.com/search?q=Aberdeen+St%2C+Chicago%2C+IL...
- saagarjha 2y agoGuess what every landlord is typing into the search bar of this site
- bsza 2y agoAnd because of that let’s expose everything to Google Search so landlords don’t even need to know about this site?
- swores 2y agoThat clearly wasn't the point they were making, they were just explaining why your suggestion of "only make it show to people who search for a specific address" doesn't do anything to limit the ability of landlords to look up reviews about themselves.
- bsza 2y agoIt does though. It eliminates the need to ever include an address in plaintext on the site, making it a lot harder for data harvesters to extract private information from it. Landlords likely won’t iterate through each and every similar site to search for reviews. At least not all of them.
- baby_souffle 2y ago> Landlords likely won’t iterate through each and every similar site to search for reviews. At least not all of them. It only takes one. And if it’s been automated, you’ve just made it plain text but with extra steps.
- bsza 2y ago> if it’s been automated Bcrypt has key stretching, brute-forcing every address in existence would cost a lot of CPU even for one city. How will the attacker get compensated for that?
- mbg721 2y agoYeah, anonymity in this kind of case isn't a technical problem, it's a social problem. I would never review a workplace on something like Glassdoor for the same reason; "worked in x department and wasn't happy" is easy to narrow down.
- xtiansimon 2y agoSeems like it’s a grudge-site, if your tenancy ended badly. Regardless, if the info did get leaked or the landlord did some basic investigation, or the property was just small enough that the data pool was small, what’s to keep the tenant from litigation by the landlord? I’m thinking about all those review-sites for hospitality where a bad review starts a whole lot of grief for the reviewer.
- throwaway290 2y ago"We will never give away" could be read as "we will sell for the right price".
- surfingdino 2y agoThere is no anonymity. You can only make it more expensive to obtain one's identity.
- bsza 2y agoThis site isn’t even trying, they just shove random reviews with the exact address in your face on the front page.
- thih9 2y ago> For starters, they're leaking this information to Google. How are they leaking the information to google? Our, if you’re unwilling to share the details, how much is revealed?
- yazzku 2y agogooglesyndication.com googletagmanager.com
- thih9 2y agoBoth of these redirect to google for me. I suppose these are endpoints specific for google ads. Is that your point? That is, do you mean that the website uses google's ads, which can collect user data and google might identify the website's users based on that?
- yazzku 2y agoYes. Recent example: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/25/kaiser-permanente-health-plan-millions-data-breach/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/25/kaiser-permanente-health-p... Much of the Web is infested with this plague, even some banks and other high-stakes online services.
- RobotToaster 2y ago> Yes! We will never give away any of your information. Which implies they store the information. If it was anonymous they wouldn't store identifying information.
- m463 2y agoalso radar.com/radar.io which seems to be a geolocation site?