ASCEND SOAPBOX
I agree with Alex (and it's not just because we work together). Companies
have been doing the kind of data collecting Alex is talking about for years.
As a matter of fact, some Cultural Anthropologists specialize in "Corporate
Anthropology" (for a recent related news item see
-http://www.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/dayonthejob/05/23/corp.anthropologist.idg/in
dex.html ). Collecting anonymous information about users is something almost
all websites do - I'm hesitant to say all, because I'm sure one website out
there doesn't keep a usage log (i.e. /usr/local/apache/logs/access_log or
/usr/local/apache/logs/error_log). It would be almost impossible to run a
good website that changes based on user trends and preferences and not do
some form of user tracking.
Of course the real problem is when the website tries to link the collected
data in someway to real people. Knowing that 15% of your users HTTP_REFERRER
is www.porn.com is one thing, knowing that Persons X, Y, and Z came from
www.porn.com and acting on that knowledge to send them information about the
latest sale on leather underwear and selling their names to the porn_users
mailing list is completely wrong.
In my opinion, a good website has to track generalizations about user
preferences so it can react to add to the user experience in positive ways.
One way to do this to collect anonymous data about the things a user does on
the site. This can be done and still protect a users privacy.
DESCEND SOAPBOX
Joe Breeden
--------------------------
Sent from my Outlook 2000 Wired Deskheld (www.microsoft.com)
-----Original Message-----
From: Alex Porras
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2001 2:38 PM
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: RE: Concepts of Unique Tracking
Although I agree about privacy issues, I will keep it short by stating that
there is a difference between identifying you as "unique user 1309850825"
(assuming no personally identifiable information is also collected) versus
identifying you as "Stephen Adkins". You can use the first method to
collect aggregate information about what percentage of your users are
accessing what parts of your website the most/least, so you could customize
your website appropriately. That does not require me to know who everyone
is, personally speaking.
--Alex
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen Adkins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2001 1:14 PM
> To: Jonathan Hilgeman; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> Subject: RE: Concepts of Unique Tracking
>
>
>
> How quickly we forget ...
>
> Don't we remember the huge outcry over Intel putting a unique
> ID in every
> CPU which would could be transmitted via web browser and
> destroy all of our
> privacy?
>
> The frustration we feel as programmers who are trying to
> identify anonymous
> visitors
> is exactly what privacy is all about.
> And I am thankful for it.
>
> Get used to it.
> People need to opt-in in order to be identified.
> The closest thing we can get to this is people leaving their cookies
> enabled on their
> browser.
>
> Stephen
>
> At 10:43 AM 5/25/2001 -0700, Jonathan Hilgeman wrote:
> >Let's take over the world and recompile all browsers to have
> them send out
> >the MAC address of thet network card.
> >
> >Jonathan
> >
>
>
