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Tell HN: The Creepiness Factor – Why I Won't Apply for Analytics Jobs

6 points by MichaelCrawford ↗ HN
I don't want to be tracked. It is for that reason that I blackhole analytics servers in my hosts file:

   127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
   127.0.0.1 www.hosted-pixel.com
Now I am very public on the Internet. What I object to is anyone at all being tracked. If you visit a website that sells strawberry jam, why should the prioprietors of that site even be permitted to know you were, say, a gay Muslim male?

On Thursday I went to a job fair in Portland, however I did not approach all of the booths. One that I did not was Rentrak, because it promised a product that identifies "how they vote". Neither did I approach Webtrends because they "invented analytics".

4 comments

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MalcolmDiggs
I hear you, but I also see some value in the products. I'd put it this way: I'm a 29 year old male, do I really want to see an ad for women's bras, Dora the Explorer, or Viagra pills? No. If I'm going to be subjected to advertising all day, I'd much rather it be targeted and somewhat relevant to me.

That being said, there are certain times when my privacy is of upmost concern, and I use Tor when applicable.

In general though, I feel like any privacy on the internet is (at this point) an illusion at best, so (though it may be a cynical point of view) I assume no more harm is done by further breaches of privacy. Maybe I'm wrong at that point, but I assume privacy is a Boolean, and once it's set to false, it's false for good...these companies might as well gobble up the data too.

MichaelCrawford
I hear what you're saying, in that there are some media that I read for the ads.

I'm not exactly concerned about my personal privacy, rather that of human privacy in general. I'd have a hard time explaining Tor to my Mom for example, despite that she is quite diligent about shredding paper documents.

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