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Presidential Campaigns Leak Supporters' Info To Tracking Firms
Peter Eckersley writes "Stanford privacy researcher Jonathan Mayer has published new research showing that websites of both the Obama and Romney presidential campaigns, which are used to communicate with and coordinate their volunteers, leak large amounts of private information to third-party online tracking firms. The Obama campaign site leaked names, usernames, zip codes and street addresses to up to ten companies. The Romney campaign site leaked names, zip codes and partial email addresses to up to thirteen firms."
That's not so much a "leak", and more of a "take this". They probably even get paid for it.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Only in number of firms. Obama leaked more info.
Do you live in Ohio or something?
One would think that leaking less is out performing. Apparently presidents are like gaskets. Or sphincters. Take from that what you will.
but, considering that congresscritters exempted themselves from the Do Not Call phone list, it will never happen. We don't have a representative government, but one made of people who think they're better than those they supposedly represent.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
This isn't leaking in the traditional since that someone is giving databases of information to 3rd parties. The leaking going on here has to do with GET requests to their respective web sites containing identifying information in the URL. This is probably unintentional and may not even be occurring at all since a lot of the pages use SSL and the URLs are encrypted. Of course internal analytic software can (and probably does) retain the URLs, but that's hardly "leaking" information to 3rd parties. If I was using a pay-for analytics suite and found that the people I'm paying were looking at my private information (tracking data) I would be pretty pissed off and might even consider legal action.
TLDR: No "leaking" going on here. The headline does not match the content of the article.
Of all the reasons I don't support either candidate, of all the ways either candidate is apt to violate my privacy, this is the least.
Still, I'll add it to the list.
Vote for "The debt is too damn high" party.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
monica?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Hey I'm Aussie. I just took the opportunity.
If they do that with donated money, what do they do with tax money?
So that's what Obama meant when he promised more transparency in government!
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.