Fighting Marketing Drones Over 3rd Party Web Tracking?

Web Sawy asks: "I work for a large-ish company (4000+). We have a number of disparate divisions and, believe it or not, varying knowledge on How Technology Works. It was brought to my attention that one part of the corporate website has been using 'a third party tool' to 'compare the performance of individual ads'. In other words, some external party is tracking user surfing habits. How does one go about educating co-workers on the evils of these third party services, which are currently 'helping' the Marketing department? What technologies are people using to do this type of reporting to help the Marketing department generate their numbers? In the world that I live, I can't even see those third-party ads (or hidden images!). I certainly can build my own user tracking system using existing technologies but before I fight that major uphill battle, I wonder if Slashdot readers would share their insights."

Comments

What evils are you talking about?

[Alpha27]

You haven't detailed the evils these tools pose to the users. As others have said already on the comments, check to see if they are violating any privacy agreements your site has in place.

If the software works, why reinvent the wheel? In some way, they just said you valuable time but not having you build something inhouse that's already available. If they are comfortable with it, then good.

I'm curious what you describe as being evil. If it helps to keep a site up and running, more efficiently if your companies main source of revenue is from the ads, then what's wrong with that? I prefer getting ads that are targetted to my interest. We all know a majority of us will not fill out a form of turn-ons/offs as for what we're interested in. Instead, user tracking is fine, as long as the site doesn't violate my privacy.

Also, I hope your complaint isn't about why they didn't decide to build it inhouse instead, then that just sounds more like a programmer's power struggle.