E: What I mean by that is Google provides the means, but Google couldn't track nearly half of all sites if nearly half of all sites weren't complicit in the tracking.
It's like saying that because windows are transparent, it is ok to stare into people's living rooms. It's not - irrespective of transparency or lack of curtains.
In a world where that is clearly not ok, then why is it that this kind of thing (tracking) is deemed ok?
What we need is something that does to our online privacy, what curtains did for peoples real privacy. And, although I fear that this is not technically possible, the absence of the possibility of such protections, still does not make tracking right.
Nope. When you enter someone else’s place of business, you have no expectation of privacy. These websites belong to private entities. So it’s more like saying that because you voluntarily walked into my store, it’s ok for me to observe your behavior while you’re there. Which, of course, is completely logical and acceptable to most people.
Don’t want me to track your behavior while you’re in my store? There’s a very simple, 100% effective solution for that: don’t enter my store. Because if you do enter, you have no right to complain that I’m observing you.
That's not true at all. When I go to the hardware store to buy a box of nails, I don't have any expectation for the owner to begin following me around for the rest of the day (and in perpetuity thereafter). I also don't expect the hardware store owner to get on the phone with the grocery store owner and ask him what groceries and personal hygiene products I bought.
Also, the comment originally pertained to the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper. Are you suggesting that reading the newspaper at home grants the publisher the right to peer in through my window?
Expectations of privacy have long been enforced by social norms rather than laws. Since technology has granted corporations the means to do an end-run around social norms then we should expect the law to catch up and fill the gaps.
People may not have had a lot of privacy from their neighbours when living in small towns but they could generally count on their community to care about their well being. This is not the case with online businesses of any sort.
No, nor did I even intimate that. That's your property, not mine. That suggestion is as ridiculous as the one I was trying to refute. But when you enter my property - be it virtual or phyiscal - expect to be observed using whatever technologies and vendors I want that are legal (with a few obvious legal exceptions, such as bathroom surveillance). If, to continue with your newspaper example, you took your newspaper into my store and decided to read it there, I am fully within my rights to observe that you did that, watch you to see if you buy something while you're there, and see if others exhibit that same behavior. Depending on the results of that analysis, I might then decide to move the newspapers to the front of the store, near tables, where you can sit and read because I have determined that newspaper readers are profitable customers. There's nothing wrong with that - I've now used data obtained while you were in my store (where you have no expectation of privacy) to improve both your experience and my profitability.
Browsers run code delivered by websites. It's generally considered impolite, at least, to provide code that mines cryptocurrency on visitors' machines. Most people wouldn't defend serving up malware, either. So there is well-established precedent for arguing that there are things a website shouldn't do to its visitors.
Extensive tracking scripts are now falling into the same category as crypto miners and malware.
The explosion of ad blockers on users' browsers is a direct result of websites pushing advertising tactics way too far and not putting enough effort into the safety of their visitors. Tracking scripts will be next. Firefox has a lot to gain from pushing browser features intended to make it look like a more privacy-conscious browser than Chrome; there are already extensions like Ghostery and Disconnect, and uBlock Origin blocks a number of other tracking scripts too.
If website developers don't accept some kind of middle ground in this discussion, they'll be relying on their access logs for all of their data before long.
That sounds like HN to me. Nothing likes analogies like HN likes analogies.
Put it this way--analogies are like cars. When they're good, they're great, but when they're bad, they're really bad.
That's definitely your opinion, and it is one that is not widely held. How do I know this? Because Facebook's usage - despite a deluge of recent headlines headlines that vastly overstated their privacy issues and made it the poster child for extensive tracking technologies - hasn't gone down. So, roughly 2 billion of the world's Internet users disagree with you.
Only 26% of web users in 2016 had installed ad blockers [1]; that doesn't mean you get to say, "74% of web users don't mind advertising and malware".
Facebook announced its first net loss of North American users last quarter. They're expected to post a much larger loss during the Q1 review on Wednesday [2] as a direct result of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
I guess you can stand steadfastly behind the position that "nobody cares because there are 2 billion users", and ignore the falling metrics for user engagement [3], and the protests (see the picture at the top of [2]), and the senate hearing, and the media coverage, and the millions of Ghostery and Disconnect users who've gone to the trouble of searching for and installing extensions specifically to block tracking, and Firefox's built-in tracking protection. Sure, aside from all that, nobody cares.
But this isn't an issue that's going away yet, no matter how much you want it to.
[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/google-chrome-ad-blocker-change-...
[2]: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-users-want-revenge-a...
[3]: http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/31/technology/facebook-earnings...
We'll have to agree to disagree on the rest of your argument. Most of the 26% of users that have installed ad blockers (including myself) have done it not so much to thwart tracking, but to put an end to the poor user experience that many intrusive ads create on web pages. Visit any local newspaper site with your ad blocker disabled to view what I'm talking about. Many sites aren't even usable without an ad blocker these days. I am in the ad blocking-for-user-experience camp...I could care less about tracking. In fact, for the ads that I do see, I like them being highly targeted. I went for years without clicking on a single ad on the web. Only in the last year or two have I found them relevant enough to click every now and then. Since these advertisers aren't given any personally identifiable data by the ad networks, I don't feel any violation of my privacy either.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/zuckerberg-in-joint-senate-c...
The fact that the ads are highly targeted, and the fact that they are used by many companies, means that you are probably personally identifiable by correlation. They don't need your name. They probably have your locale (to a high degree of precision), your shopping habits, your sexual preference, your education level, your family size and many other details.
Secondly, that information is used to influence you. Cambridge Analytica still proudly proclaims, on their home page, that they "[use] data to change audience behavior." Ads on Facebook are being used by different groups to inflame political tensions [3]. The tracking widgets used on nearly every site you visit now means that some company, somewhere, knows everything you're interested in. They are in the business of using that information against you, to their benefit, whether it's in crafting sensational stories with clickbait headlines to get more of your attention, or selling you products you don't need by preying on your insecurities, or just trading it for money to other companies who will use it in new and creative ways -- like CA, who specialize in tilting voting behavior. [4]
Thirdly, you're counting on advertising firms having perfect security and never accidentally giving your information away to people who shouldn't have it. Advertising companies just don't have good history when it comes to data security [5] [6] [7].
People seem happy to ignore the ramifications of all of this, because it's not like they're feeling physical pain or discomfort or noticing any other immediate negative effect when more tracking data is collected or they see another ad. But this is a form of psychological warfare, and at least some of this stuff is designed to corrupt your thinking, to get more of your attention and change your opinions about things and convince you that it's all very harmless.
We've strayed away from tracking data and into advertising, but they are two sides of the same coin.
[1]: http://latanyasweeney.org/work/identifiability.html
[2]: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/09/07/ancestry-com-can-us...
[3]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-ads/majority-of-...
[4]: http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/20/technology/what-is-cambridge...
[5]: https://www.engadget.com/2016/01/08/you-say-advertising-i-sa...
[6]: https://pagefair.com/blog/2015/halloween-security-breach/
[7]: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/16/10/09/208249/a-s...
I did want to respond directly to one of your points that is dead wrong. With regard to this statement:
>Secondly, that information is used to influence you. Cambridge Analytica still proudly proclaims, on their home page, that they "[use] data to change audience behavior." Ads on Facebook are being used by different groups to inflame political tensions
There has been no scientific evidence that CA, the Russians, or anyone else was actually successful in their efforts to use Facebook to influence the election or "inflate political tensions". In fact, CA's own customers say that it didn't work [1]. This whole thing was a manufactured controversy.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-facebook-...
If CA were a "manufactured controversy", I think HN would've cottoned on to that quite a while ago, rather than the various comments (among thousands on the topic now) expressing surprise that people are suddenly paying attention to this:
50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16606924
Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16641550
How Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook targeting model really worked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16719403
Leaked email shows how Cambridge Analytica and Facebook first responded in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16667805
The Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t a scandal: this is how Facebook works: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16621885 (solid top comment on that thread)
Palantir worked with Cambridge Analytica on the Facebook data it acquired: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16690721
Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16644067
I'm not, by the way, providing any of these links in my comments to try to change your mind. I realized several comments ago that you've got an entrenched and unmovable opinion that pervasive user tracking on the internet is no big deal. I've been providing these links for anyone else reading who might be interested in the topic.
Should browsing the Sears website be more like reading a Sears catalog in your own home, or more like physically walking into a Sears store? It's clearly got some aspects of both.
You can't just assume one is the "right" view and then use that to argue your point, because once you boil it down that's precisely the thing you disagree about.
EDIT: I see thaumaturgy made essentially the same point in a sibling comment.
It's more like Home Depot slapping a GPS tracker on my person, which I am take with me when I leave the store, isn't it?
When I walk into store (a) it's reasonable to assume that store (a) might be observing my behaviour, along with perhaps a sub-contracted security company etc. It's less reasonable to assume that walking into store (a) gets me observed by stores b-z and subcontractor 1-255 which is more like what happens on the web. They don't generally follow around town for the rest of the week either.
Go to web site or store and get observed by Google, Facebook, and dozens of assorted analytics companies who will then endeavour to track you wherever you go next, for as long as possible.
Now then, ignoring JS and adblocking for a moment, which mainstream ecommerce or news sites can one frequent in order to adopt the "100% effective solution" of not being tracked?
Well what about the new amazon retail store, that records your every move?
Also what about stores or shopping malls that contract their security cameras out to other companies? Surely those security companies may be doing all kinds of stuff with people's facial recognition data.
Amazon's high street store is an easy to avoid aside until a Tesco or Walmart tries it.
I hope that GDPR restricts the extent of "all kinds of stuff" that companies wish to do to cctv security footage. I suspect it won't be nearly enough. The trouble with cctv is the consumer/shopper has effectively no way of knowing thus should be quite strictly regulated.
When I somehow get upgraded to business class while flying it is rather flattering to be greeted by the stewards by name while being offered a glass of decent champagne.
What if your store could do the same for people considered social influencers or "whale" spenders? As they enter the store, dispatch your Personal Shopper squad to gently welcome them, and nudge them towards purchases -- or if nothing else, a little social media moment worthy to share with their followers.
Perhaps their social posting history will reveal a hyper-personalized special offer that can make them buy that $2000 handbag.
At what point does this behavior run afoul of stalking laws?
For example, stalking is illegal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking#Laws_on_harassment_an...
as is wiretapping
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#Two-p...
The point here is that they do it just because the snooping is invisible. And that irks me.
The point is, don't come on my property - physical or virtual - unless you don't have a problem with your behavior being observed while you're there.
You cant tracke in your bathroom or changing stalls. You cant listen to my phone calls or ask me intimate personal details about where I have been without explicitly asking me.
This is only somewhat true. At the spa for instance, you very much have an expectation of privacy. Practically speaking it is sort of contextual? Even at say a restaurant, I would be both surprised and disconcerted to discovered the business had recorded the entire conversation that occurred at my table, even though I would be unsurprised by a bit of eavesdropping.
So the rules of the tracking and surveillance road are well defined, and most businesses adhere to those rules. All of the privacy complaints I have seen recently did not involve violations of the law. Rather, these complaints are essentially that people have a fundamental human right to use private services being run at the cost of private entities on the terms that users choose, which just isn't how the world works.
No, it's more like saying that if I phone your store to ask how much some item costs, you think it's OK to come over to my house and peer through all of my windows.
So you'd have no problem with a restaurant owner bugging all their tables and listening in on their customers' conversations?
Tracking on websites works like this:
* the site sends your computer content and code
* your computer runs the code, which causes it to send data about you to a whole bunch of third parties
* meanwhile, your computer displays the content to you
All you have to do is decide not to do step 2. It's your computer, it's under your control.
But what's problematic is that most users are clueless. And that browsers by default send all that data. To prevent that, you must (at least somewhat) know what you're doing, tweak settings, install add-ons, etc.
It'd be cool if browsers protected users' privacy, by default.
Legally, it is. You might advocate to change that law.
However, exact same thing applies for Facebook and all the likes. If a website is entirely self-contained, nobody other than your ISP or your browser/OS may track you over there as you directly type its name out to the address bar.
If Facebook is to blame more than the websites putting their like button on their websites, then so is Google.
On top of this, many people use Google as a gateway to the Internet. Even for the websites that they are pretty sure about their domain names, people rather search for it on the google.com, and follow the link from there. This allows Google to track them, even when they do not use Chrome. Yet, many even do use Chrome, very likely tracking you even when you do not visit a website through google.com.
So Google isn't even dependent so much on the other websites using their analytics, definitely not as much as you state with:
> Google's ability to track users is 99% entirely due to companies like [...]
It would be interesting to know the breakdown of contributions of Analytics, google.com, Chrome, etc. to Google's tracking capabilities.
It would be interesting to actually see the breakdown between Google's 1st party tracking (direct-from-Google) vs Google's 3rd party tracking (Tracking thanks to 3rd parties)
>If Facebook is to blame more than the websites putting their like button on their websites
I think the problem here is how Facebook sold the user data and/or used the data to target - as it allowed much more narrow demographic targeting than I think even Google provides. (I could be wrong on this, I've never actually USED either for ads - although I work for a company that does so I really should probably know this...)
I'm not advocating that either side is wrong in that statement, but just drawing a similarity.