Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: in our last episode, I talked about how web analytics
Speaker 1: work in general and why they are important both for
Speaker 1: people visiting a website and owners of websites and the
Speaker 1: advertisers who support websites and the companies that advertise through
Speaker 1: these advertisers. They really help website designers also get a
Speaker 1: better understanding of how their users navigate and consume stuff
Speaker 1: on their sites and allows the web administrators to tweak
Speaker 1: things to make the experience better. So it's not just
Speaker 1: about advertising. It's also about how can I make this
Speaker 1: website easier to navigate, more intuitive, more interesting, more exciting
Speaker 1: to use, or more useful or whatever the purpose of
Speaker 1: the website is that benefits the visitor, makes the experience
Speaker 1: more satisfying one, and it helps the website administrator also
Speaker 1: monetize through web advertising. But now let's get to the
Speaker 1: other side of the coin. Tracking information obviously brings with
Speaker 1: it some very nasty potential problems like threats to privacy
Speaker 1: and security. Information is incredibly valuable. It is the currency
Speaker 1: of the Internet. You might thought it was bitcoin, it's not.
Speaker 1: Data is your currency. And generally speaking, the more data
Speaker 1: a company can get about people who are using the web,
Speaker 1: the better it is for that company, not necessarily better
Speaker 1: for the people, the better for that company. Knowing information
Speaker 1: about a person means being able to sell to that
Speaker 1: person more effectively, or it might mean being able to
Speaker 1: exploit that person in less legal or ethical ways, and
Speaker 1: so they out of gathered about users can become a
Speaker 1: tool or a weapon, depending upon the type of information
Speaker 1: gathered and the will of the person who has access
Speaker 1: to that information. So ideally you don't have any bad
Speaker 1: actors out there, and even if people are gathering a
Speaker 1: lot of information about users, they're not trying to put
Speaker 1: it to any malicious purpose. Before I dive into a
Speaker 1: detailed account of web analytics and privacy, I should say
Speaker 1: that not everyone is out to scrape every bit of
Speaker 1: data off of users or to figure out the identity
Speaker 1: of a specific user. Many analyzes are more focused on
Speaker 1: identifying emerging trends rather than singling out one specific user,
Speaker 1: So the goal is not to look at that data
Speaker 1: like a browser's history, like looking at the cookie information
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, this person went from X website to
Speaker 1: HY website to Z website and then come to the
Speaker 1: conclusion of that must be Jonathan Strickland instead. More often
Speaker 1: than not, these analytics companies are looking at aggregated data
Speaker 1: that is, at least on the service level, anonymous, and
Speaker 1: the purpose is to see more valuable information, such as
Speaker 1: rose Gold is so totally in right now, so put
Speaker 1: all your rose Gold products on your main page because
Speaker 1: people are gonna go nuts. Right This really dates this
Speaker 1: podcast because I'm about about two years out of touch,
Speaker 1: so it tells you this one should have come out
Speaker 1: two years ago. Anyway, this concept makes sense when you're
Speaker 1: thinking of big sweeping strategies, like which products you want
Speaker 1: to feature on an online stores homepage, or which news
Speaker 1: stories are likely to be thought of as the most
Speaker 1: important and relevant on any given day. So you might
Speaker 1: look at something like Google Trends and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are searching this particular term. Let's
Speaker 1: create an article about this thing. We can inform people,
Speaker 1: we can make sure it's a really good article, but
Speaker 1: we can also take advantage of the fact that people
Speaker 1: are interested in this idea right now, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of a mutually beneficial experience in the ideal. But it
Speaker 1: would be silly to say that no one's interested in
Speaker 1: your individual preferences, because that's not true. There are people
Speaker 1: who are very interested in your individual preferences. For one thing,
Speaker 1: it can help identify what different groups of people like,
Speaker 1: so a company could present those different groups with distinct
Speaker 1: experiences that were meant to appeal to that group. Right.
Speaker 1: That's targeted marketing or targeted advertising. So let me give
Speaker 1: an example. Let's say I run an online store, and
Speaker 1: I've coded my home page in such a way that
Speaker 1: it can dynamically display different products based off the information
Speaker 1: I glean from analyzing a user's behaviors. And my site
Speaker 1: uses cookies and JavaScript, and those analyze the are and
Speaker 1: it presents the most appropriate products for return visitors. So
Speaker 1: when you pop into my store, I happen to know
Speaker 1: that you recently started for Star Wars toys because the
Speaker 1: cookie information that I've installed on your browser from your
Speaker 1: previous visit has told me this, And so I have
Speaker 1: some Star Wars related products that I want to prominently
Speaker 1: show to you in my homepage. Now when I say
Speaker 1: I want to, all of this is done automatically. You've
Speaker 1: got all this meta information, these tags that computers can
Speaker 1: use to sort through and select to present what appears
Speaker 1: to be the most appropriate products that will appeal to
Speaker 1: the visitor. Now, let's say your buddy shows up and
Speaker 1: your buddy is not as into Star Wars as you are.
Speaker 1: Your buddies like a big clover Field fan, and your
Speaker 1: buddy visits my online store and see is a totally
Speaker 1: different selection of products than you do when they pop on.
Speaker 1: Maybe your buddy is visiting my store for the first time,
Speaker 1: in which case I don't have any for any information
Speaker 1: about him or her. I don't know anything about this
Speaker 1: person because they've just come to my website for the
Speaker 1: first time. Now, they come there and I decided to
Speaker 1: pop a cookie on their web browser, so i'll know
Speaker 1: the next time they come through. But this first time,
Speaker 1: it's a blank slate. That means that my store is
Speaker 1: probably gonna show them a pretty neutral selection of products.
Speaker 1: Maybe there will be some of the most popular products
Speaker 1: that happened to appeal to a broad spectrum of people,
Speaker 1: but they aren't targeted toward that specific person yet. Because
Speaker 1: I don't know what that person's preferences are. But as
Speaker 1: your friend navigates through my site, I'm collecting more and
Speaker 1: more information about what they like based upon their behaviors,
Speaker 1: and then I can make sure the next time they
Speaker 1: come to my website that it serves up a more
Speaker 1: appropriate landing page for them based upon their preferences. Again,
Speaker 1: and I say, I decide this is all automatic. Let's
Speaker 1: go a step further. Let's say that you are running
Speaker 1: a blog that has online advertising on it. So you've
Speaker 1: got spaces on your blog that are reserved for advertising,
Speaker 1: and the ads themselves are tracking users with cookies and JavaScript.
Speaker 1: Most ads come from brokers who have numerous clients, right,
Speaker 1: So let's say that you go to a blog and
Speaker 1: you see an ad for a popular soft drink company.
Speaker 1: That ad did not come directly from the soft drink company.
Speaker 1: More likely than that it came through an advertising company
Speaker 1: that has that soft drink company is one of its clients.
Speaker 1: So the brokers, these companies that have thousands of clients
Speaker 1: representing all these different industries, can use this tracking information
Speaker 1: in cookies and JavaScript to determine what stuff you're most
Speaker 1: likely to respond to based upon your browsing history, so
Speaker 1: that means the broker could potentially serve up ads based
Speaker 1: on the information to help improve the chances that you'll
Speaker 1: find any given ad more useful and click on it.
Speaker 1: In these cases, the experiences are personalized, but that personalization
Speaker 1: still is not dependent upon your identity per se. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's based upon what you like and what your behaviors
Speaker 1: have indicated you find valuable or interesting. But it's not
Speaker 1: like that specific data is identifiable stuff like your name
Speaker 1: or your address or anything like that. Although they can
Speaker 1: at least get an approximation of your address based upon
Speaker 1: uh your IB address, so that that could at least
Speaker 1: know generally where you were, um maybe more specifically if
Speaker 1: you're happy to use a mobile device and you have
Speaker 1: location tracking on, or as it turns out, you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to have location tracking turned on. There was
Speaker 1: a recent story from uh AP that looked into this
Speaker 1: and said that Google Android devices would check in with
Speaker 1: Google an average of fourteen times an hour, giving information
Speaker 1: about location even with location services turned off. So that's
Speaker 1: a kind of tracking information that definitely rubs people the
Speaker 1: wrong way, very valuable information. If Google wants to serve
Speaker 1: up ads to you. That's that are based on your
Speaker 1: your locale, but not very comforting if you're thinking about
Speaker 1: I'm just carrying my phone around. I don't need my
Speaker 1: phone telling Google everywhere I'm going throughout the day. Now,
Speaker 1: there are instances where a company, an agency, or a
Speaker 1: government might want to identify someone based upon their browsing behavior.
Speaker 1: For example, let's say that there's a crime that's been
Speaker 1: committed and law enforcement has come into possession of a
Speaker 1: computer that they believe belonged to the perpetrator of that crime,
Speaker 1: but they still don't know who that perpetrator is. They've
Speaker 1: got they've up the computer, his or her computer, but
Speaker 1: they don't know who that person is yet, and there's
Speaker 1: no overtly identifiable information on the computer's hard drive, no fingerprints,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Would it be possible for an
Speaker 1: investigator or an analyst to be able to figure out
Speaker 1: the identity of the computer's owner just through that person's
Speaker 1: browsing history. If you looked at the information of what
Speaker 1: websites they went to, would you be able to figure
Speaker 1: out who it was that owned that computer? Well, setting
Speaker 1: aside the possibility that the perpetrator had remained signed into
Speaker 1: any services that would link back to his or her identity.
Speaker 1: The task would require the analysts to look at the
Speaker 1: patterns of behaviors and the browser history to figure out
Speaker 1: what had the person had that computer's keyboard been doing.
Speaker 1: It's kind of scary to think about this, but this
Speaker 1: is totally possible to do. It's built upon the same
Speaker 1: principles that were used to support e commerce. Back in
Speaker 1: two six there were some Russian analysts who proposed a
Speaker 1: method of user profiling that would create profiles of users
Speaker 1: based on their browser history. So you would get shoveled
Speaker 1: into progressively smaller groups based on your behavior. So you know,
Speaker 1: initial analysis might put you in one of several broad categories,
Speaker 1: but the more specific behaviors you exhibit, the more specific
Speaker 1: the groups could be that you would be sorted into,
Speaker 1: and that would represent profiles. As word vectors, that's a
Speaker 1: method to assign context to words that ties into natural
Speaker 1: language processing. I did a couple episodes on those a
Speaker 1: little while back. The researchers use those word vectors to
Speaker 1: create clusters of topics in a hierarchy to determine or
Speaker 1: determined by rather user behavior and the stuff that users valued.
Speaker 1: More as demonstrated in their behavior by following links or
Speaker 1: staying on certain pages for a longer time, or making
Speaker 1: searches would occupy a higher place in that hierarchy, and
Speaker 1: that was one way of identifying users, at least by interest.
Speaker 1: Now again that didn't assign a name yet, but that
Speaker 1: was a building block towards this. There's a two thousand
Speaker 1: seven paper I read that described a different approach that
Speaker 1: could predict a user's gender and age based on his
Speaker 1: or her web browsing behavior. The researchers created a model
Speaker 1: that relied on users reporting their age and their gender,
Speaker 1: so it's a self reporting kind of thing, and they
Speaker 1: would also give up access to their browsing history to
Speaker 1: this model, and the model would learn the associate to
Speaker 1: associate certain behaviors with respect to age and gender and
Speaker 1: draw general conclusions based on that. And once it learned
Speaker 1: through this training process, it could then analyze an unknown
Speaker 1: users browser history and then predict that person's gender and age.
Speaker 1: I don't know how accurate it was. I came across
Speaker 1: this information all reading a totally different but related paper,
Speaker 1: didn't have time to track down the two seven document.
Speaker 1: By this does lead to the way law enforcement might
Speaker 1: use user profiling to identify someone based on their browser behavior.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more in just a second, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Before the break,
Speaker 1: I mentioned a paper that related paper was specifically about
Speaker 1: identifying a suspect based on their web behavior and it
Speaker 1: has the title Web user profiling based on Browsing Behavior Analysis.
Speaker 1: And in that paper, the researchers describe a method in
Speaker 1: which a computer believed to belong to a suspect is
Speaker 1: compared to other computers that have known users. So law
Speaker 1: enforcement gets hold of a computer, they know that this
Speaker 1: computer was used by the perpetrator of a crime. They
Speaker 1: don't have an identity yet, they do have some suspects.
Speaker 1: They don't know if any of the suspects actually were
Speaker 1: the perpetrator. So the goal is to take this target computer,
Speaker 1: the one that was involved with the actual perpetrator, with
Speaker 1: candidate computers the ones that suspects are using, and factors
Speaker 1: such as the specific sites that were visited, the time
Speaker 1: spent on every site, the order that the user would
Speaker 1: browse the sites. All of these things are taken into consideration,
Speaker 1: and at the heart of the matter is the idea
Speaker 1: that we humans tend to be creatures of habit. So
Speaker 1: here's how it would work. Investigators take that target computer
Speaker 1: and they perform a data extraction on the computer. They
Speaker 1: pull all the information they can off of it to
Speaker 1: get a lead on the identity, and includes the browser
Speaker 1: history and browser behaviors, and they analyze this. They have
Speaker 1: identified some suspects and those suspects may be using other
Speaker 1: computer s access online services, and those are the candidate computers.
Speaker 1: So law enforcement gets possession of those candidate computers, presumably
Speaker 1: through a warrant, and they preserve they do the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. They do a data extraction on each
Speaker 1: of those computers. Then they process all that information and
Speaker 1: they analyze it, and investigators determine which factors are domains
Speaker 1: of interest, like what what are the things in the
Speaker 1: target computer that could potentially be identify irs for somebody,
Speaker 1: and they break this down into a vector representation. They
Speaker 1: wait each of the factors to assign each one in
Speaker 1: relative importance. So, for example, awaiting might represent that the
Speaker 1: activity on the target computer showed the perpetrator repeatedly visited
Speaker 1: the same five websites, so those websites would be weighted
Speaker 1: heavier than others because the perpetrator had gone to them
Speaker 1: multiple times, and it might within those five websites, each
Speaker 1: of those websites might have their own weighting that is
Speaker 1: based upon the amount of time spent on those sites
Speaker 1: and the number of times that the perpetrator had logged
Speaker 1: into them that are recorded in that browser history. These
Speaker 1: indicate trends and behaviors. Then you would compare that with
Speaker 1: the information you found from the candidate computers, and if
Speaker 1: you found one that demonstrated a similar browsing behavior as
Speaker 1: the one that was on the target computer, you can
Speaker 1: make an argument that the respective suspect may well be
Speaker 1: your criminal, then you can consider them a lead. It's
Speaker 1: not exactly a smoking gun, but it's certainly says this
Speaker 1: person browses on the Internet exactly the same way as
Speaker 1: the person who owned this computer, and we know the
Speaker 1: person who owned this computer committed the crime, and it
Speaker 1: can lead you into a more specific investigation. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and seventeen, Gizmoto ran a piece titled Here's all
Speaker 1: the data collected from you as you browse the Web,
Speaker 1: and it was written by David Neild and I really
Speaker 1: recommend checking out this article. Again, it's called here's all
Speaker 1: the data collected from you as you browse the web.
Speaker 1: It's great piece. I'm gonna kind of go over it
Speaker 1: here a little bit. Neil points out the type of
Speaker 1: data your computer can share with sites on the Internet,
Speaker 1: and as he mentions, it can include all of the following.
Speaker 1: Your IP address. Now that makes sense. The IP address
Speaker 1: corresponds to your computer or your router UH or a router.
Speaker 1: It's necessary so that a site knows where to send
Speaker 1: the data that you've requested. So if you visit a
Speaker 1: website your typically you're technically sending a request to a
Speaker 1: web server. The server has to know where to send
Speaker 1: that site otherwise you'll never get anything back. But an
Speaker 1: IP address can provide information that gives the site owners
Speaker 1: a general idea of your location, not specifically where you are,
Speaker 1: but generally where you are. Then there's the type of
Speaker 1: system you're using, such as whether or not you're on
Speaker 1: a phone or a tablet, or a computer or a
Speaker 1: gaming console. UH. This is what will also typically include
Speaker 1: information like the operating system that you're using, the display
Speaker 1: resolution on the device you have, what processors your machine
Speaker 1: might have like CPU and GPU, and the specific types
Speaker 1: like how many cores that how much processing power that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, Which browser you might be using, what
Speaker 1: plugins you have installed in that browser, your devices battery
Speaker 1: charge could be part of the information. All of that
Speaker 1: is part of the information that that your machine is
Speaker 1: handing over. In this exchange, Neild also mentions the web
Speaker 1: page that will let you know all the data your
Speaker 1: browser since two pages. By default, that site is called
Speaker 1: web k dot robin linus dot com or linus if
Speaker 1: you prefer, it's w E B k A Y dot
Speaker 1: R O b I n l I n us dot com.
Speaker 1: So I went ahead and checked it out just to
Speaker 1: see what would say about my connection here at work.
Speaker 1: So it knew my work computer is running when seven, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. It also knew that I was using Chrome
Speaker 1: as my browser. It identified the GPU and the CPU
Speaker 1: for my computer. It knew what resolution I had set
Speaker 1: my screen. It knew my laptops battery was at a
Speaker 1: charge because it was plugged into a docking station at
Speaker 1: the time. It identified the I s B my office uses.
Speaker 1: It identified the download speed I had available to me.
Speaker 1: It estimated my location. It was off by a couple
Speaker 1: of blocks, but it was in the general area. It
Speaker 1: identified which social media accounts I was logged into at
Speaker 1: that time. If it had been a mobile device, um,
Speaker 1: it would have also told me about my devices orientation,
Speaker 1: like whether it was in portrait or landscape mode, and
Speaker 1: more information like that. And then yield linked to another
Speaker 1: site called click that one can monitor mouse movements and
Speaker 1: mouse clicks and how active you are with a site.
Speaker 1: I visited this one too, and it was kind of creepy.
Speaker 1: It's just find in a way to actually reveal to
Speaker 1: you how much information is being sent to a website.
Speaker 1: So there's actually a voice that talks to you, prerecorded
Speaker 1: stuff that's meant to be a little unsettling, and it
Speaker 1: sends you information telling you, oh, you just move the
Speaker 1: mouse to the right, you just moved it to the left,
Speaker 1: You've sat still for thirty seconds, You've been viewing this
Speaker 1: page for a minute. So this is all information that
Speaker 1: could be sent to a site like they could actually
Speaker 1: monitor where is your mouse moving across a web page,
Speaker 1: which again gets a little creepy. Right now, there are
Speaker 1: legitimate uses for that kind of information from a website
Speaker 1: design perspective, it could tell you a lot about the
Speaker 1: sort of things users find attractive or interesting. About your website,
Speaker 1: but there are also potential misuses and legit analytics firms
Speaker 1: won't use information to compromise users privacy, but not everyone's legit.
Speaker 1: Here's another example. Let's say that you are in a
Speaker 1: faery person. Actually, I'm not gonna say that you're a
Speaker 1: nice person, you're not nefarious. Let's say there is a
Speaker 1: nefarious person out there, and this nefarious person has installed
Speaker 1: some rogue JavaScript on a website, then has tricked people
Speaker 1: into going to it, and is able to give certain
Speaker 1: bits of information that appear to include compromising information about
Speaker 1: the user, and they're able to contact the user to
Speaker 1: send a message out to that users perhaps their email
Speaker 1: address or something on those lines, and through this method
Speaker 1: of contact, they are trying to blackmail the users, saying
Speaker 1: I have dirt on you because I know that you've
Speaker 1: visited such and such website. Maybe it's an adult content website,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a website that's about a sensitive subject. And
Speaker 1: they're able to tell this from the cookies or the JavaScript,
Speaker 1: and so they're sending a message that's essentially saying, if
Speaker 1: you don't cooperate with me, I'm going to reveal the
Speaker 1: information I have about you, Now that may not be
Speaker 1: that they have any real information about you, anything that's
Speaker 1: of any real damaging worth. But they're trading on people's
Speaker 1: natural fears and and they know that even if not
Speaker 1: of their attacks are going to be successful, at least
Speaker 1: enough of them will be for it to be worthwhile.
Speaker 1: So that's one way someone might make nefarious use of
Speaker 1: this kind of data. I'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: some ways that governments and companies and individuals have tried
Speaker 1: to protect themselves and others from this kind of abuse
Speaker 1: in just a second, but first let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. Now, there are some laws
Speaker 1: in place that help protect people from predatory use of
Speaker 1: their data. In the United States gets a little loosey goosey.
Speaker 1: There's some state level laws in some places, but obviously
Speaker 1: those apply within a state, not across the entire country.
Speaker 1: There are a few federal protections that are in place.
Speaker 1: In Europe, the protections are way more extensive. The g
Speaker 1: d PR resolution is an example of that, but it's
Speaker 1: just one example of that. So in Europe people generally
Speaker 1: enjoy a better level of protection as far as uh
Speaker 1: their data security is concerned, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of analytics companies out there that have tried to address
Speaker 1: these issues because they want to know. They want people
Speaker 1: to know, Hey, what we do is valuable. What we
Speaker 1: do actually is part of what makes the Internet work.
Speaker 1: As long as we do it with accountability and we
Speaker 1: do it with respect to your privacy, everything should be
Speaker 1: fine and everyone should benefit. So one of the big
Speaker 1: pushes in the industry is to be more transparent about
Speaker 1: what which data points these rights are collecting and to
Speaker 1: what purpose, Like why are they collecting all this information?
Speaker 1: And it can't just be transparent. It needs to be
Speaker 1: worded in a way that makes sense. It's not buried
Speaker 1: in jargon and legal ease, because then just nine people
Speaker 1: just skip over it and they don't get angry until
Speaker 1: something goes wrong. So being able to explain in blame language, hey,
Speaker 1: we are collecting these data points about people. This is
Speaker 1: how we're using that data. Here's how you will benefit
Speaker 1: from that use, and here's how we benefit from that use.
Speaker 1: If it's completely transparent, everyone is much less likely to
Speaker 1: get upset because they're less likely to misinterpret what is
Speaker 1: happening or to make assumptions about the worst right. So
Speaker 1: tracking in itself might not be malicious. It's meant to
Speaker 1: make things better for everybody, but it's also very easy
Speaker 1: to misuse the information and data is valuable right, so
Speaker 1: it has actual real value to it. That means bad
Speaker 1: actors will go after it too. So what can you
Speaker 1: do on a personal level to protect yourself. One thing
Speaker 1: is that browsers have a do not track setting that
Speaker 1: you can enact. You can enable do not tracked track. Rather,
Speaker 1: in theory, that protocol would mean that sites would agree
Speaker 1: not to track you. Now, I say in theory because
Speaker 1: there's nothing legally requiring sites to obey that protocol, so
Speaker 1: they might track you anyway. The more reputable ones probably won't,
Speaker 1: but other sites might not really give it any mind,
Speaker 1: so it's not really the safest approach. You can try
Speaker 1: to browse in private or incognito mode and a browser
Speaker 1: lots of browsers allowed for this, and usually what that
Speaker 1: means is it will only load cookies for that current session,
Speaker 1: so you're not gonna have cookies save to the browser
Speaker 1: in this way, so that reduces a site's ability to
Speaker 1: track your information. Although the longer you stay on a
Speaker 1: site and the more you click around, the more information
Speaker 1: you are giving that site. Uh, Incognito mode really only
Speaker 1: kind of a racist trace of your activities on that
Speaker 1: local device. So the computer you're using, the mobile device
Speaker 1: you're using, whatever that may be. Incognito mode really just
Speaker 1: keeps it from being you know, your activities being left
Speaker 1: on that device. Your Internet service provider will still see
Speaker 1: where you're going, because it has to in order to
Speaker 1: be able to send you the information that you're requesting
Speaker 1: through the web browser. Um, you still have an IP
Speaker 1: address that can still narrow down where you live or
Speaker 1: where you're accessing the information from. If you log into
Speaker 1: a service like Facebook or Twitter or something like that,
Speaker 1: that's a dead giveaway. So this is a limited help.
Speaker 1: Another thing you might do is install browser extensions that
Speaker 1: limit active scripts from running on websites without your authorization.
Speaker 1: So there are extensions like no Script Security Suite that's
Speaker 1: for Firefox, UH, their Script Safe that's for Chrome. These
Speaker 1: are extensions that put the control in your hands. So
Speaker 1: when you access a site that has one of these
Speaker 1: sort of invisible trackers on it or whatever, it'll pop
Speaker 1: up and alert you and you can choose to either
Speaker 1: allow it or to prevent it from being able to
Speaker 1: track you. UH. At least in the JavaScript approach. If
Speaker 1: people are looking at their access logs, that's still gonna
Speaker 1: show that you've visited the site, but it won't give
Speaker 1: the kind of tiny amounts of data that JavaScript would.
Speaker 1: Tiny tiny is in focused, there's actually quite a lot
Speaker 1: of data. The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers up an extension
Speaker 1: for Firefox, Opera, and Android called Privacy Badger. This add
Speaker 1: on blocks trackers and spy wear. Specifically, it quote stops
Speaker 1: advertisers and other third party trackers from secretly tracking where
Speaker 1: you go and what pages you look at on the web.
Speaker 1: If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple
Speaker 1: websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser
Speaker 1: from loading any more content in your browser. To the advertiser,
Speaker 1: it looks like you suddenly disappeared. End quote. So it
Speaker 1: does this by identifying which content sources are registering your
Speaker 1: presence on a web page, including the ads that are
Speaker 1: loaded on that web page, and as you go from
Speaker 1: one page to another, if it keeps picking up the
Speaker 1: same sources, that's an indication that you're being tracked, and
Speaker 1: those are the ones that will um it will stop
Speaker 1: loading into your web browser, and since it stops loading it,
Speaker 1: the source can no longer get information about your activities,
Speaker 1: and it's like you just disappeared into thin air. But
Speaker 1: what about them virtual private networks. I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: do a full episode about VPNs and why they exist
Speaker 1: and why they're important and when you should use one.
Speaker 1: I'll do one of those in the future, but generally,
Speaker 1: in this context, they're mostly good for hiding your physical location. UH.
Speaker 1: The lokal ation will appear to correspond to that of
Speaker 1: the virtual private network, not to you, not to your
Speaker 1: real world location, because the web browser will be acting
Speaker 1: like the VPN is the source of the traffic, not
Speaker 1: not your computer, and the VPN handles it from that
Speaker 1: point to get it to you. So you would still
Speaker 1: get cookies from sites. They'd still be able to track
Speaker 1: your activities, but I would do it through the the
Speaker 1: context of the VPN and UH. And since your behaviors
Speaker 1: are filtering through the VPN instead of your normal I
Speaker 1: s P, what you're really doing is trading one entity
Speaker 1: for another. Instead of having the I s P be
Speaker 1: the one monitoring all the stuff you're doing, the VPN
Speaker 1: could technically monitor all the stuff you're doing, so I
Speaker 1: guess then it just comes down to who do you
Speaker 1: trust more, the VPN or the I s p UM.
Speaker 1: The answer is going to be very dependent upon which
Speaker 1: of those entities are you're making use of at any
Speaker 1: given time. So one last little bit about the pros
Speaker 1: and cons of tracking. Tracking is what makes online advertising work.
Speaker 1: So it's somewhat infuriating because online tracking gives us a
Speaker 1: really granular view of which ads work on which sites,
Speaker 1: and which ones don't. We learned about how different form
Speaker 1: factors can be more or less effective. You might find
Speaker 1: out that at A tests really well on site one,
Speaker 1: but it fails miserably on site too. But AD B,
Speaker 1: which is for the exact same product, is at A,
Speaker 1: but it's a different design that one works great on
Speaker 1: site too. Or maybe you find out just by changing
Speaker 1: where an AD displays on a page it drives more engagement.
Speaker 1: The reason this is important is because running a website
Speaker 1: is not free. If it were, the world would be
Speaker 1: a very different place. So companies like how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com have costs associated with them, right, and those
Speaker 1: are significant costs, not just like web hosting, but other
Speaker 1: stuff like off the space, lay salaries, healthcare lots and
Speaker 1: lots of costs. So if there's no money coming in
Speaker 1: to cover those costs, you won't stay in business. You
Speaker 1: go into debt. Eventually you go into bankruptcy. Uh. So
Speaker 1: you want to make money to pay off the costs,
Speaker 1: and you really want to make enough to make a profit.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what a business is all about, is
Speaker 1: making profits. So without profit, businesses don't really exist. And
Speaker 1: then the content goes away. So unless we move to
Speaker 1: a totally different model of the web, which probably be
Speaker 1: one where we have to pay for everything we want
Speaker 1: to access, everything would be behind a paywall, it would
Speaker 1: be really hard to continue to have web content. We
Speaker 1: have to have some financial means to support the content
Speaker 1: or else the content goes away. Same thing is true
Speaker 1: for podcasts. I mean, the reason we have sponsors is
Speaker 1: to h to pay off the costs of producing these
Speaker 1: shows and posting the shows and continue to develop shows
Speaker 1: and make new shows. The ads support that, and hopefully
Speaker 1: the ads that we are choosing to place with shows
Speaker 1: are meaningful to our listeners, because if they're not, then
Speaker 1: it's not really doing anyone any good. And ultimately, you
Speaker 1: want the best possible relationship between content, advertising, and users.
Speaker 1: You want something where everybody is happy with it, because otherwise,
Speaker 1: what's the point. The same thing is true with the website,
Speaker 1: so the tracking is very important to get that kind
Speaker 1: of information. It's kind of funny to me because classic media,
Speaker 1: your traditional media, things like television, magazines, newspapers, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, everything that has advertising in it, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a lot harder to tell how well that advertising works,
Speaker 1: how much impact that advertising has. With the exception of
Speaker 1: stuff like the Super Bowl in the United States, where
Speaker 1: people famously will tune in just to watch commercials, you
Speaker 1: really don't know how much attention is being directed toward commercials.
Speaker 1: You might be able to get some general ratings about
Speaker 1: how well a certain television show has done, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't really tell you anything about the ads themselves. So
Speaker 1: it's funny to me that the traditional media, the advertising world,
Speaker 1: is very comfortable in that space and in the online
Speaker 1: space where we can actually see how well an ad
Speaker 1: does because we can see how many people click on it,
Speaker 1: how many people actually went through and said this is interesting,
Speaker 1: I want to know more, I want to be able
Speaker 1: to buy this. We can actually see how effective that is,
Speaker 1: and somehow that makes it less valuable, uh in some cases,
Speaker 1: like the CPMs that are demanded and in direct mail,
Speaker 1: like sending stuff out in magazines and things that's way
Speaker 1: higher than what you typically see for most online advertising. Um,
Speaker 1: one of those things where a little knowledge can be dangerous.
Speaker 1: I guess, very fascinating topic. And while you can go
Speaker 1: through and do those extensions and use VPNs and things
Speaker 1: and turn off a lot of the the elements that
Speaker 1: will allow sites to track you, if you do that,
Speaker 1: you also lose that of the benefits that tracking gives
Speaker 1: to users. That might be a worthy trade off for
Speaker 1: you if you really value your privacy and you don't
Speaker 1: want sites to get access to that kind of information.
Speaker 1: But UM, you know it's it's it's just this kind
Speaker 1: of the way our online world works, and without some
Speaker 1: sort of transformative change, I don't see that being any
Speaker 1: different anytime soon. But it is an interesting subject. If
Speaker 1: you guys have any ideas for future episodes, I any
Speaker 1: sort of topic you want me to cover, whether it's
Speaker 1: a technology, a company, a person in tech. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: someone I should interview or have on as a guest host.
Speaker 1: Send me a message. The email addresses tech stuff at
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