But besides that this particular third party is well-known in web circles; they own a known bulk-spamming company and they have been found guilty of misusing collected information in recent past.
On top of that the idea that a third party is most likely innocuous is naive in my opinion.
So this third party gives my Marketing folks information about our visitors surfing habits. GREAT! We get information about OUR visitors (customers and potential customers).
What is stopping that same "third party" that we have no control over from turning to our competition and selling them that same information?
Think the people in Marketing, who can not even tell me what it is that the third party is actually doing, are keen enough to ensure that at least contractually our competition does not get that info?
Think that a large well-known spyware ^W "user tracking" company would not violate some ethics in order to make some cash?
That is where my thoughts are coming from. I believe that someone in our Marketing person saw a powerpoint presentation on the Ways To Make Money given by this third party, and yet they have no clue as to how this system works or what the (possibly evil) downsides are.
I have asked: what percentage of our website visitors are sensitive to their personal privacy? I haven't received a response yet, but there are certainly some eyebrows raised at that.
Oh, and I asked: how do we measure that the information given to us by this third party is both real and accurate?
Since their system actually collects data from their own server (a well-known, and oft-blocked ad server), I question if even they can give us that information (and I know that they can't give us any info about my surfing habits).
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But besides that this particular third party is well-known in web circles; they own a known bulk-spamming company and they have been found guilty of misusing collected information in recent past.
On top of that the idea that a third party is most likely innocuous is naive in my opinion.
So this third party gives my Marketing folks information about our visitors surfing habits. GREAT! We get information about OUR visitors (customers and potential customers).
What is stopping that same "third party" that we have no control over from turning to our competition and selling them that same information?
Think the people in Marketing, who can not even tell me what it is that the third party is actually doing, are keen enough to ensure that at least contractually our competition does not get that info?
Think that a large well-known spyware ^W "user tracking" company would not violate some ethics in order to make some cash?
That is where my thoughts are coming from. I believe that someone in our Marketing person saw a powerpoint presentation on the Ways To Make Money given by this third party, and yet they have no clue as to how this system works or what the (possibly evil) downsides are.
I have asked: what percentage of our website visitors are sensitive to their personal privacy? I haven't received a response yet, but there are certainly some eyebrows raised at that.
Oh, and I asked: how do we measure that the information given to us by this third party is both real and accurate?
Since their system actually collects data from their own server (a well-known, and oft-blocked ad server), I question if even they can give us that information (and I know that they can't give us any info about my surfing habits).