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Why does thesite privacy statement not mention RedSheriff?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
An Australian company, whose web bug may be collecting all sorts of interesting referrer information?
What control does youthnet have over the content of the lump of javascript downloaded each time we view a page?
What control does youthnet have over the content of the lump of javascript downloaded each time we view a page?
Post edited by JustV on
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We simply employ a third party who are able to collect additional data, and provide much more detailed reports.
By the way you're a few years out of date - although our code may still mention redsherrif in a couple of places the company is now owned by Nielsen (the company that collect the TV ratings in the states) - under the name Nielsen-Netratings.
To make it clear we would recieve no funding and this website would be gone without being able to provide verifiable and accurate web traffic information.
As a rough example of what happens and what is collected. Everytime a page is looked at the ip, the url, the page previously viewed, the screen resolution, the operating system, java script on your computer, and a few other things like type of connection are collected.
This information builds into a picture of what visitors look at, what is popular and provides a relatively accurate picture of the number of unique users looking at our website.
This information informs decisions on design, on popular areas, on the popularity of search terms, meta data review, necessary articles, articles to promote, levels of necessary accessibility, success of new services, and the methods of providing services, failure or success of email registration, funding decisions and many more of the necessary internal decisions required by a website recieving 500,000+ visitors in a month.
It should be noted that Nielsen-netratings remains probably the single most popular web analytic companies in the world and retains a constant relationship with every major website in the world. They are used, for example you can see in their report on online men's magazines that all of these sites use netratings, as do the BBC, Sky, etc.
It's also worth remembering that it would never be Nielsen who would release specific information, if the situation occured, to the proper authorities - that would be done by YouthNet. As an example of our confidentiality policy please check out askTheSite's confidentiality policy. It's also worth remembering that regardless of netratings your ip address is always logged by every single website you visit.
The only websites that don't maintain these logs tend to be website that provide anaonymous browsing - the kind of websites that were instrumental in allowing the attacks on Jake0 and his friends and family following his death.
Ultimately, Netratings just adds to the information that is useful to us to maintain this charity it's never going to be linked to you personally, and it just gives us lots of pretty graphs that hopefully turn green and keep the wheels turning.
Further, by allowing a lump of javascript to be download from the third parties site, you have less control over what information they are collecting. I though you said they were American.
Do you still stand by that statement given the American legal situation?
yes, but here information about IP addresses visiting a site is collected by a third party.
I understand your reasons. I expect you to collect and use the data, in ways outlined by your privacy statement. I was surprised by the webbug, but shocked that you failed to mention it. I'm also mildly disturbed that you appear to attempt to use the Jake0 thing to justify the Neilsen stuff, when the two are quite unrelated.
I strongly feel your privacy statement needs updating as I believe it to be misleading. I'd like to see a link to the relevant privacy statements from Nielsen.
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Well I'll certainly pass on your request but our lawyers have looked over all of our legal information. I would point out again that without the information we wouldn't be able to provide this website, and if you can't trust us you may have to decide not to use this website.
Of course, but not without a court order applied to an ISP - how do you think so many people get letters about downloading pirated content? Though they are normally sent through an ISP. Though recent anti-terrorism legislation means that the law is slightly different around credible threats of terrorism.
As already mentioned the recording of an IP address is an automatic part of how a website works. It's what directs a server where to send data - therefore there's always a record. You can combine the time of the request with the linked ISP to the IP, then the ISP is able to provide the details if required to by law.
Oh shit, i thought the companies said that to scare us from not downloading.
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I will point out the police claimed to be surprised when I insisted on the paperwork - the implication being that "most" ISPs will give the details out to anyone claiming to be a police officer
MAC address in entirely irrelevant - they are lost at the first IP router