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Tynt Insight Is Watching You Cut and Paste
jerryasher writes "In recent weeks I've noticed that when I copy and paste text from Wired and other websites, the pasted text has had the URL of the original website appended to it. Cool, and utterly annoying, and how do I make that stop? Tynt Insight is a piece of Javascript that sends what you copy to Tynt's webservers and adds the backlinks. Tynt calls that a service for the site owner, many people call that a privacy invasion. Worse, there are some reports that it sends not just what you copy, but everything you select. And Tynt provides no opt outs. Not cookie-based, not IP-based, but stop-it-you-creeps-angry-phone-call-based. It ain't a pure useful service, and it ain't a pure privacy invasion. But I sure wish they'd go away or have had the decency never to start up in the first place. I block it on Firefox with Ghostery."
Personally I have stopped browsing without NoScript enabled. I sincerely hope that the functionality it provides is adapted as a base feature in future browsers. Javascript is simply too dangerous to be trusted by default. Sites need to earn that trust, IMHO.
STFU about slashdot bias.
we are tracking the content, not the user.
And when the content is personally identifiable?
We are currently working on a global opt out
Why not an opt in?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If I was posting for the company I work for I would create a new account specific for the company I work for to post with. I would not use my everyday account.
I find his post rather credible and I don't see how old his login has bearing on the issue. I find his answer credible because of the argument made.
So, what is the reason that you are posting as AC? Just trolling are you?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
If you want to see what is actually collected - sign up for an account and look at the dashboard, you will see that we are tracking the content, not the user.
Doesn't signing up for an account with you kinda defeat the purpose of not giving you any of my information? Even signing up for your vaporware opt out gives you information about me that you will no doubt exploit in some way. In order to opt me out you need to be able to uniquely identify me.
Somebody's been insulted by the story. Half the replies to this story have been down-modded as Troll.
Make note, meta-mods!
Unfortunately meta-moderation is quite useless these days. It mattered when it produced a "fairness" score for moderators and whether they received points was affected accordingly. Now it just meta-moderates posts and not moderators, which completely defeats the useful original purpose. Anyone who's been on this site for a decent length of time has noticed the increase in low-quality moderation that has happened ever since this decision was made.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I can't speak for anyone else, but I find a couple things wrong with this:
1) Like a number of people, I tend to highlight text as I read -- it's a good way to mark my place, and it helps overcome some of the stupid font and coloring decisions that sites make. That means you're not just telling publishers what I want to preserve and promote, but snippets of what I'm reading. That bugs me, and I can't imagine that it's useful.
2) Maybe you're not storing or tracking personally identifiable information, maybe you are -- I have no way of knowing. (I appreciate the offer of the dashboard access, but that's just what you choose to share) I have to trust you not to, and you are not behaving in a manner that makes me want to trust you: silently sending data? Asking me to opt-out rather than opt-in? Sorry, no. I've been to a couple of the sites mentioned here and had no idea that my reading habits were being monitored in this way -- that makes me feel like I'm being spied on, and I have to wonder what else you're doing that you just haven't been caught at yet. You guys launched without an opt-out, that tells me that you consider privacy concerns an afterthought.
3) Even if I trust you not to mistreat my data, how do I know that you're sending this in an intelligent fashion? I haven't done a TCPdump yet, but when I do, am I going to discover that you're sending what I highlight plain-text? Can someone who isn't you track me personally based on what you're collecting and sending? Is there any effort to make sure that the sites who use this are not being stupid and applying your tool to text on secure pages? How can I know without stopping and peering at the source for every page I visit?
4) If my choices are individual opt-out on your customers who are polite enough to offer it versus either blanket blocking or global opt-out, I'm going to have to pick global opt-out even if I don't mind the polite folks using it. Otherwise I have no control over how the less-trustworthy people use it -- as an opt-out service, your whole service is only as trustworthy as your least honest customers. And I cannot imagine that your customers who rely on ad revenue are happy to have you recommending that people who don't want to be spied on use an ad blocker.
I actually don't mind the attribution tool, I think it's clever and potentially useful -- but also something that could have been accomplished without tracking my reading habits.
If you want to be trusted and not "flamed", it's simple: make it opt-in, and give me a good reason to opt in. You make money off monitoring my browsing habits, maybe I ought to get a cut.