News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Reddit now tracks all outbound link clicks by default, existing users opted in. Parent comment

Re:Reddit now tracks all outbound link clicks by default, ex... by pdkl95 on Thursday July 07, 2016 @04:46PM (#12051968)
> users will ever care?

Then make them care.

> track with ga and gtm

That is a far bigger problem than advertising. I'm fine with sites that track the pages they serve, because that is local only. The problem is when these per-site events are aggregated into a single database.

If someone has the event log of every website you visit, not only do they have your entire reading list, they also have a very accurate picture of your pattern-of-life. Google can probably estimate e.g. when you sleep or the length of your commute simply from the timestamps of the GA events they can correlate to your account.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit now tracks all outbound link clicks by default, ex... by soared on Thursday July 07, 2016 @05:07PM (#12052077)
Worst case scenario, Google, FB, and the US Gov have access to that kind of data. Google/FB both say they don't record that, or destroy/change it before giving advertisers access to it.

I see your point, but realistically I don't think any organization could/would ever do this. Outside of NSA vs. Snowden type cases, but I guess that is where it really counts.

[ Parent | on HN ]