Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Should I Expect Tracking When Subscribing To News Sites?
Long-time Slashdot reader robot5x writes: I'm a fan of online privacy and, where possible, don't automatically permit cookies and tend to set Ghostery to block all trackers in my browser. This rarely causes a problem -- I have lots of subscriptions to various sites which require me to login and have only rarely encountered minor issues. Recently I had a present of a Slate Plus membership. I really like their content and was keen on supporting it financially. Activating it from the email they sent required me to first register as a user. I clicked on the icon, and nothing happened. Ghostery picked up 7 trackers which I had blocked.
Assuming that one of these was the cause, I activated each in turn and reloaded. None of them made any difference, except a single tracker from JanRain. Accepting this tracker let everything work perfectly. Reading more about JanRain though -- and particularly its interaction with Adobe analytics (which it also tries to load) -- I discovered that they wanted to "create a holistic view of your business by collecting, analyzing and reporting all customer interactions. To derive the most actionable insights, you must link your customers' actions with who they are and what their interests are. Janrain bridges the gap by connecting demographic and psychographic data, collected through traditional and social login, with Adobe's behavioral data, so you understand the whole customer journey".
I do not want them to do any of this, and don't think I should have to. Interactions with Slate's 'support' were excruciating and -- while they at least didn't ask me to restart my computer -- they actually ended up saying that allowing these trackers is tied to their login process and I have to either accept or get a refund.
Robot 5x asks: Is it unacceptable to have to accept being tracked as a paying customer for new sites? "Or am I just being a big baby?"
Assuming that one of these was the cause, I activated each in turn and reloaded. None of them made any difference, except a single tracker from JanRain. Accepting this tracker let everything work perfectly. Reading more about JanRain though -- and particularly its interaction with Adobe analytics (which it also tries to load) -- I discovered that they wanted to "create a holistic view of your business by collecting, analyzing and reporting all customer interactions. To derive the most actionable insights, you must link your customers' actions with who they are and what their interests are. Janrain bridges the gap by connecting demographic and psychographic data, collected through traditional and social login, with Adobe's behavioral data, so you understand the whole customer journey".
I do not want them to do any of this, and don't think I should have to. Interactions with Slate's 'support' were excruciating and -- while they at least didn't ask me to restart my computer -- they actually ended up saying that allowing these trackers is tied to their login process and I have to either accept or get a refund.
Robot 5x asks: Is it unacceptable to have to accept being tracked as a paying customer for new sites? "Or am I just being a big baby?"
Why the hell do we selectively tolerate this, though. Slashdot is just as bad as anywhere else, plus they're hypocrites. I just checked and one of the sites blocked by Noscript when I load Slashdot is, you guessed it, janrain.com. So, this article is critical of tracking and specifically calls out janrain.com as an undesired tracker while simultaneously serving up tracking scripts from janrain.com. WTF?
I use uMatrix, from the guy that makes uBlock Origin, and it tells me that Janrain is trying to load content here on Slashdot. It is, of course, blocked. I don't use Ghostery since they sold their collected data. They did, at least, warn people ahead of time that they were going to do so. Still, I feel it is sleazy and I already used uMatrix so I didn't really need it. Thus, it got uninstalled. (Raymond Hill - I think is his name, makes good stuff, by the way.)
Anyhow, you should expect to be tracked but you shouldn't stand for being forced into being tracked. Ask for a refund and move on. That's horrific of them. I see a couple of comments that minimize it. I still firmly believe that you should be able to opt out and have the site work - more so if you're paying for it. On the other hand, if a site tells me they wish for me to not block content then I leave the site and don't return. It's their property and I respect that. I just don't use their content nor do I attempt to circumvent their measures.
Thoughts... Use uMatrix. With uMatrix you can elect to let Janrain through for that domain and that domain only. They'll be able to track you on that domain but nowhere else. Dump Ghostery and spend a while learning how to use uMatrix. It's whitelist based - so everything's blocked by default. Just remember to save your settings. I start with least permissions and work my way up.
This way, you're allowing Janrain to work on that site and only that site. It doesn't really do them any good because it's blocked everywhere else. You're even kind of skewing their data which makes it less accurate. Maybe that'll teach them a lesson. Personally, I'd request a refund.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
It's not a choice to do business with them when I click on a new site in google and 50 trackers start up and steal my info before the site's content even loads.
And if you think users should be required to search for this info about every new aite before clicking a new link to decide if it's worth it to visit, you're absolutely fucking insane.
It's one thing if the site shows a blank page and says "we use xyz trackers for xyz purposes. If you agree to this we will show you content. If not, you cannot enter our website." As much as I hate trackers, I'd have a bit of respect for sites that do that. The reality though, that they load the trackers/malware without your knowledge before you can even access the content, and without giving the user a say in it, means your free market scenario can't work out. In a true free market where users have the ability to make decisions based on what the website does and doesn't track, tracking should be illegal u less it's opt-in.
Where the hell have you been lately? Regardless of the numbers, ask any real person and you'll learn unemployment is terrible, in the states at least, because illegals/H1b's are taking the jobs, robots are replacing other jobs, Obama care has caused companies to reduce hours and employees to remain under the limits, and CEOs continue in their race to the top to value profit over anything, considering workers disposable rather than part of the company's identity, as they once were. Wealth continues to accumulate in the too 1% of society, whole the middle class continues to shrink.
Also, you have to remember that underemploymed individuals count as employed. So your college graduate with 100,000 dollars in loans working three minimum part time jobs to barely make ends meet counts as employed, making the numbers look better, yet we can all agree this individual cannot find a job he really wants. Lastly, unemployment also doesn't count people who have given up and are no longer actively seeking a job, not because they don't want to work in most cases, but rather just because there are no fucking jobs out there, unless you want to juggle multiple part time gigs just to barely survive. Might as well just get on welfare or move back in with mommy in that case. Or commit a crime and get three hots and a cot in federal prison. Or go abroad and try to teach English somewhere like China where you have pretty much no protections against abuse and no way to even make them pay, period, but even these jobs are now requiring teaching experience, the legitimate ones, at least. Lastly, you could always try to start your own business, but let's be honest, unless you are extremely lucky or have an absolute genius idea, as in something so radical, not just "I want to open a coffee shop that has a certain gimmick", you need connections to succeed in business. Hell, you need connections to get the loans required to even start a business, and banks sure as hell aren't giving them to some fellow with 100,000 in student loans already who is working at Walmart.
End of rant. But seriously, citation needed for how bad unemployment is? Open your fucking eyes dude.
Shouldn't that be illegal? It is in the EU. The more I read about this stuff on Slashdot the more I think that the US needs some strong privacy laws.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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