Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Should I expect to be tracked as a subscriber to a news website? 1
robot5x writes: I'm a fan of online privacy and, where possible, don't automatically permit cookies and tend to set Ghostery to block all trackers in my browser. This rarely causes a problem — I have lots of subscriptions to various sites which require me to login and have only rarely encountered minor issues.
Recently I had a present of a Slate Plus membership. I really like their content and was keen on supporting it financially. Activating it from the email they sent me required to first register as a user. I clicked on the icon, and nothing happened. Ghostery picked up 7 trackers which I had blocked.
Assuming that one of these was the cause, I activated each in turn and reloaded. None of them made any difference, except a single tracker from JanRain. Accepting this tracker let everything work perfectly. Reading more about JanRain though — and particularly its interaction with Adobe analytics (which it also tries to load) — I discovered that they wanted to "create a holistic view of your business by collecting, analyzing and reporting all customer interactions. To derive the most actionable insights, you must link your customers’ actions with who they are and what their interests are. Janrain bridges the gap by connecting demographic and psychographic data, collected through traditional and social login, with Adobe’s behavioral data, so you understand the whole customer journey".
I do not want them to do any of this, and don't think I should have to. Interactions with Slate's 'support' were excruciating and — while they at least didn't ask me to restart my computer — they actually ended up saying that allowing these trackers is tied to their login process and I have to either accept or get a refund.
My question to Slashdot is — is it acceptable to have to accept being tracked as a paying customer of a news site (or any site, in fact), or am I just being a big baby?
Recently I had a present of a Slate Plus membership. I really like their content and was keen on supporting it financially. Activating it from the email they sent me required to first register as a user. I clicked on the icon, and nothing happened. Ghostery picked up 7 trackers which I had blocked.
Assuming that one of these was the cause, I activated each in turn and reloaded. None of them made any difference, except a single tracker from JanRain. Accepting this tracker let everything work perfectly. Reading more about JanRain though — and particularly its interaction with Adobe analytics (which it also tries to load) — I discovered that they wanted to "create a holistic view of your business by collecting, analyzing and reporting all customer interactions. To derive the most actionable insights, you must link your customers’ actions with who they are and what their interests are. Janrain bridges the gap by connecting demographic and psychographic data, collected through traditional and social login, with Adobe’s behavioral data, so you understand the whole customer journey".
I do not want them to do any of this, and don't think I should have to. Interactions with Slate's 'support' were excruciating and — while they at least didn't ask me to restart my computer — they actually ended up saying that allowing these trackers is tied to their login process and I have to either accept or get a refund.
My question to Slashdot is — is it acceptable to have to accept being tracked as a paying customer of a news site (or any site, in fact), or am I just being a big baby?
