Re: Re: Re: A Little Something.

On 22 May 2008, at 09:56, Robin Vickery wrote:

2008/5/21 Stut <stuttle@gmail.com>:

I was going to ignore this, but I'm in a confrontational mood today, so please accept my apologies for the noise. On 21 May 2008, at 14:08, Michelle Konzack wrote:

Am 2008-05-12 15:40:54, schrieb Stut: Note: I am working for the french Ministry of Defense.

Ooh, give 'em a peanut. I live and work in the UK and every site I work on that uses Google Analytics has nothing specific about Google Analytics in the privacy policy. They all talk about use of cookies, IP addresses and server logs and I've never had any complaints.

http://www.google.com/analytics/tos.html 7. PRIVACY . You will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the Service to track or collect personally identifiable information of Internet users, nor will You (or will You allow any third party to) associate any data gathered from Your website(s) (or such third parties' website(s)) with any personally identifying information from any source as part of Your use (or such third parties' use) of the Service. You will have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy and will comply with all applicable laws relating to the collection of information from visitors to Your websites. You must post a privacy policy and that policy must provide notice of your use of a cookie that collects anonymous traffic data. So yeah, you don't need to specifically mention google-analytics. And you're definitely not allowed to link it to any personally identifying information. On pain of Lawyers.

I think that's what I said, but thanks for the clarification.

But, at risk of labouring the point, I don't have an issue if you decide to worry about inconsequential things like websites gathering anonymous usage data so they can improve the experience for you. I couldn't care less if you disable Javascript to prevent evil popup ads. I don't really give a damn if you decide to use lynx as the ultimate surfer condom.

Really, I've no problem with sites gathering anonymous usage data. I only get a little more wary when it's a third-party collecting the data as I have no relationship with them.

I can kinda understand that, especially since Google could, if they wanted to, combine data from your travels around different sites to build a better picture of you, but since it's all anonymous the only use it would have is to provide better targeted advertising. I personally have no issue with that since if I have to see ads on the sites I visit I'd rather they were relevant to me.

On the other hand, it really does depend who the third party is: I'm not that bothered about Google. But I would block anything and everything from Phorm or the like without a second thought.

Indeed, but Phorm is a completely different beast. In fact it's likely to be impossible to block content coming from Phorm since their system can potentially inject arbitrary code into pages before they reach you - you may not even know it's coming from them unless you read a sites privacy policy. The only way to block it will be to change to an ISP that doesn't use them. I wouldn't worry about it though, if it's going to be an opt-in service (which it looks like it will) I don't see enough people doing that to make it financially viable.

My issue is purely and simply that if someone decides to remove half the code for something they should not feel they have the right to complain to the developers when they see errors. You wouldn't expect a car to work if you removed all the cylinders, would you? But I'd love to see the persons face when you take it back and complain.

I don't think that's an accurate metaphor. In this case they were allowing all the code from the originating web server to run, but were blocking an independent third party server. It's more like expecting a car to work when you remove the trailer.

Not really since the car doesn't need the trailer to function properly. Maybe a better metaphor would be removing the aerial and then complaining that the radio reception is very poor.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

Pure contrariness? That's certainly my major motivation.

I do like disagreeing with people, especially when I think/know I'm right. -Stut -- http://stut.net/