ATS use's google analytic's..which is considered illelgal. why is it?, page 1

privacy

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Topic started on 5-7-2009 @ 09:53 AM by TheAmused

talk.softalkltd.com...

Google Analytics - it's illegal! CorporateBloggingBlog reports that Google Analytics could be illegal in the European Union. You see Google Analytics uses cookies which is against European Union law unless you tell visitors that you are doing it, why you are doing it and how they can avoid it.

www.corporateblogging.info...

According to Swedish and European Union law, it's illegal to set cookies without telling people on the site that you do, what they're used for and how they can be avoided. Google Analytics, GA, does set cookies. What information they collect from your visitors is impossible to know (one of the cookies is valid until 2038, though...). When a lot of people, among them probably many bloggers, start using GA they will in fact break the law unless they warn their visitors. And how many will do that?

please do not take it as if i am bashing ats.

i just happen to figure out this site use's Google analytic.
i did a search to find out what it does ect.
and found it is illegal in the uk ect.

you may move to a better spot if you like. i have no idea where to post such a story.

i have no idea why google analytic is considered to be illegal.
so can we share view's to why this service google offer's is?

please don't bann me for telling the truth

here is the java script it say's your using.
www.google-analytics.com...

so why is it considered illegal to some people?
i call it advertising ..so please tell me your view's.
thank you.

please please dont bann me ats master's lol
just asking a question lol

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 10:05 AM by XXXN3O

reply to post by TheAmused

I am sure this will be in the T&C's is it not?

Thats why we have those annoying ads that target by region etc before you sign in.

Third Party Data Cookies:

Advertising networks that serve advertising on AboveTopSecret.com may write their own cookies for the purposes of determining advertising frequency and relevance, and to match ads against your interests based on aggregate non-personally identifiable information learned about your Internet browsing. We have performed reasonable diligence on all advertising networks authorized to serve ads on our websites to ensure that their data cookies are for this purpose and nothing more. Many of the providers serving display ads on AboveTopSecret.com provide users with the ability to opt-out of these third-party cookies. Below is a list of the networks which may, from time to time, deliver ads to our users (many may only occasionally deliver ads):
Google
DoubleClick
Mediaplex
Eyeblaster
Eyewonder
Interpolls
PointRoll
Unicast
Safecount
Factor TG
TribalFusion
Casale Media
Specific Media
Value Click Media
24/7 Real Media
Pulse 360

Data Mining:

At no time will your personal profile information, posting history, or any other activity specific to your time on our websites be used for the purposes of targeted messages from advertisers or marketers purchasing ads or other marketing products on these websites.

The privacy and T&C's mention google and once you sign in you do not get targeted ads as far as I am aware.

I dont know to be honest though, maybe someone else can answer this better?

Might be better to ask in board & business questions?

[edit on 5-7-2009 by XXXN3O]

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 10:12 AM by TheAmused

reply to post by XXXN3O

i know it's just for ad's to make revenue for ats.
i don't blame them.

i just don't see why uk considers goggle analytic illegal.

btw firefox's addon AD hacker found this. is only reason i brought this all up to start with.
www.adhacker.com...

So i got no idea .
i just thought i would bring up the topic.
and ask why the uk considers it to be illegal.

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 10:14 AM by XXXN3O

reply to post by TheAmused

I think it was considered illegal because it tracks what you look at over the internet and then attacks you with ads based on your preference.

Ie, look at nude pics, nude pics will pop up one day

Look at watches, watches pop up

The privacy issue was a cause for concern and rightly so in my opinion.

[edit on 5-7-2009 by XXXN3O]

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 10:26 AM by Darthorious

An easier explanation to understand them is this.

If you get adds popping up for some type of singles site listing singles in the same town you live in, that is how a cookie works. Targeting you with something feasible to buy their service.

Certain countries require that you know before they are placed on your computer not like it will happen but sense google is a big company they can go after them easily and have them change a few things. As opposed to a dating site in Peru for example.

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 10:34 AM by PsykoOps

reply to post by TheAmused

That maybe the law but I have never seen any site that tells that they use cookies or how to avoid them. Not likely that anyone ever will be pursued for braking this law.

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 10:44 AM by weedwhacker

reply to post by TheAmused

I'm not much of a computer techhie, but I DO know you can delete "cookies".

Have them 'enabled' to sign on to ATS...because ATS does get revenue from adverts, and they are generally unobtrusive and for the most part benign, at least to me anyway.

Later, you can delete so that 'cookie bots' (Is that a term???) don't follow you around on other Interweb sites.

Again, just my general (poor) knowledge on the subject.....

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 11:37 AM by rogerstigers

reply to post by weedwhacker

I work with web apps every day of my work life and have for at least the past 10 years. Ever since Microsoft tightened security on the IE coding model to prevent _javascript from reading just any cookie, this whole issue seems moot.

When cookies are created by the web applications and stored on your computer, they have to be tagged with the domain that the cookie is applicable to. This helps the browser determine which cookies to send to the server when it is making a page request. The browser will not send cookies that are not directly related to the domain they are tagged with (i.e. abovetopsecret.com cookies cannot be read by belowtopsecret.com).

Google analytics, as I understand it, is used to track visitors to your site for the purpose of seeing popularity of certain pages, etc. They use a cookie to tag browsers so that one person doesn't get counted multiple times just because they refreshed the page a bunch.

The _javascript included is probably also ad related. Yahoo ads is much more blatent about this, which is why you get popup warnings a lot talking about "this site is trying to access another site.. " This is how Yahoo determines what ads to show.

In the end, the big companies will generally not waste time outside of the advertisements to track users on sites that are not theirs. I know how Corporate IT works and they generally don't like to waste time for anything goofy like that because their IT departments are cost centers to them.

Edit to add: The reason people freaked and made laws about these things is because in the early days of the internet, especially all the Web 2.0 stuff, there were not so many security restraints on cookies. Any site could access cookies from any other site with some clever programming. This caused some concerns about privacy and the like. Laws are much slower to change than software, though, so they haven't kept up.

[edit on 7-5-2009 by rogerstigers]

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 12:07 PM by badmedia

I use google analytics on my websites, and I could honestly not give a crap what the EU says.

I am not based in the EU, my servers are not based in the EU, and when you connect to my servers which are in the US, then your EU laws do not apply.

I use google analytics because it helps my website. Google gives great tools and information about how they see your site, and this allows site owners to improve their site for better search results and so forth.

The cookies thing is like rogerstigers says, a moot point at best. 1 site can not read another sites cookies.

However, since you are calling the google domain, then they can "track" your surfing. But, only across sites that use google things like the analytics. This means that pretty much every website you visit would need to have google on every page in order to really track what you do.

Google does obviously get put on alot of pages, so there is some legitmate concern there. However, they will only have your IP address, and have no way of knowing who you are. As well, if you delete the cookie and change your IP address, they will lose all "tracking" of you from that point.

The only way they could know who you are specifically is if you have a google account you stayed logged into. So if you are worried about it, then make sure you don't have a google account. Even then, it's only possible and only provides very limited amounts of data/tracking.

In other words, big brother has to be a part of it in order to know who you are, unless you give that information up freely like with a google account. And if big brother is involved, they are not going to be bothering with cookies or mundane things like that which provide very limited tracking in comparison to the entire web, or actual sites they might be wanting to watch people on. It doesn't cover your email, IM's and many other things, not to mention private pages with logins.

If they want to watch what you do on the net, then you wouldn't know and it and you won't be stopping them. They will just listen in on your connection and get everything, email, web, messages, games - everything that goes across your lines.

In the end, I don't even worry about this stuff. Like roger, I do this stuff for a living and have for many years. If more than what I've said was possible, I'd probably be finding ways to make use of it - and not in bad ways. I have multiple websites for example. It would be nice if I could set a login/id cookie that they could all read. ATS would love it too, you wouldn't need to login in for all the different places around here. You ever notice that you have to login to ATS, BTS and the media center all seperately? This is why.

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 12:19 PM by badmedia

Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by TheAmused

I'm not much of a computer techhie, but I DO know you can delete "cookies".

Have them 'enabled' to sign on to ATS...because ATS does get revenue from adverts, and they are generally unobtrusive and for the most part benign, at least to me anyway.

Later, you can delete so that 'cookie bots' (Is that a term???) don't follow you around on other Interweb sites.

Again, just my general (poor) knowledge on the subject.....

Actually, you can go even further and only accept the cookies from ATS, but not from the advertisers.

You can also go into your windows/system directly, unhide the hidden things and there is a file called HOSTS. Open that file in notepad, and you can bypass any and all DNS servers directly, and just reroute the domain names of those advertisers to some non-existent local address, and you will never connect to those domains at all, just get dns errors in place of the ads. This is all ad blockers do. Ad blockers give a list of known ads etc they ad, but if it's really a concern then you can just add google to the list manually.

Pretty pointless IMO, but you do have complete control over what your computer connects too if someone is really that paranoid. It's really easy to do the above paragraph, if you open the file it even gives instructions on how to do it.

Sometimes hacking programs do the above as well, except rather than direct them to no where, they will simply change the dns to one of their own servers, and pretend to be that site. There is apparently a Russian hacker network of some kind that does this.

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 02:24 PM by TheAmused

ok let me ask it as a conspiracy nut.

is it conspiracy nut safe?
as in goggle get's our ip to visiting this site.

then if any one want's to ask and confront Google here we are in catch 22.

so if you was a hard core conspiracy type person andeveryone out to get ya type...
would you post on a site with a tracker than tell's Google your ip that you indeed visited?

just asking..

allso i got no idea they can track em all day..that i dont care about personally.

just asking question's..trying to figure what all this is about myself.lol if ya get my point

[edit on 5-7-2009 by TheAmused]

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 02:31 PM by badmedia

Originally posted by TheAmused
ok let me ask it as a conspiracy nut.

is it conspiracy nut safe?
as in goggle get's our ip to visiting this site.

Yes, Google gets your IP to visiting this site. But that would happen even without cookies, and cookies aren't needed in order to "track" this. The "tracking" cookies are done in order to not show you the same ads over and over. They have all the information in weblogs if they want to track your activity.

then if any one want's to ask and confront Google here we are in catch 22.

so if you was a hard core conspiracy everyone out to get ya type...
would you post on a site with a tracker than tell's Google your ip that you indeed visited?

just asking..

allso i got no idea they can track em all day..that i dont care about personally.

just asking question's..trying to figure what all this is about myself.lol if ya get my point

If you are worried about it, then just edit your HOSTS file and block Google out. Then you will never connect to the Google server, and they will not have the first clue if you visit this site or not. Might be against the T&C of the site, so check with that first because as I said earlier, it is the exact same thing ad blockers do, and is a form of ad blocking.

google-analytics.com is the domain name for the analytics, so you could block it and not block ads and Google search engine. Of course, if you are that worried about it, not sure what it would matter.

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 02:46 PM by TheAmused

reply to post by badmedia

lmfao

maybe if ya give us a detail step by step to blocking google analytic..it may help other's.

like c:\\ windows sys 32 host folder ect open edit put www.google.anayticls in it idk lol

just saying some folk's are paranoid.
me i just like to pass bs around lol

but it may help other's.

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 04:51 PM by rogerstigers

reply to post by TheAmused

Actually, if you are indeed paranoid enough to not want google analytics in contact with ya, or any other specific site for that matter, the hosts file is a great way to get around that.

Note this only works for requests from your browser that are made to a NAME (www.google.com) not an IP address (38.26.154.19)

Go to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc (your path may vary slightly, but there's the generic one)
Open the file called Hosts in Notepad
Add a line to the bottom that reads :

127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com

(edited to correct the error that was quietly and politely pointed out without being mean about it.

)

Save the file and you are done. What this does and points all traffic for www.google-analytics.com to your local computer. Be prepared for Javascript errors, though.

[edit on 7-5-2009 by rogerstigers]

reply posted on 5-7-2009 @ 05:04 PM by badmedia

Originally posted by TheAmused
reply to post by badmedia

lmfao

maybe if ya give us a detail step by step to blocking google analytic..it may help other's.

like c:\\ windows sys 32 host folder ect open edit put www.google.anayticls in it idk lol

just saying some folk's are paranoid.
me i just like to pass bs around lol

but it may help other's.

I thought I did. The post above me gave a more detailed answer on it, I just didn't include that because if you open up the file it tells you all that and gives you an example.

Here's what the actual file looks like. You just edit and add the line

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost

So you just add the line roger gave:

127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com

To the bottom, and it's blocked. All the calls will go to your localhost and error out quick.

[edit on 7/5/2009 by badmedia]

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