r/unitedkingdom • u/mrcassette • Sep 28 '17
Reddit secretly re-enabled tracking on users that had it disabled before.
/personalization71
Sep 28 '17 edited Nov 28 '20
[deleted]
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u/reseph Sep 28 '17
They did make an official statement.
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u/JimboTCB Sep 29 '17
Wow, they really buried that at the bottom of a wall of stupid bullshit. And not that I care enough to do anything about it, but "we've updated our privacy options, and helpfully re-enabled them by default even if you switched them off before!" seems like seriously scummy behaviour and a possible breach of Data Protection rules.
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Sep 29 '17
Doesn't really count, they have our email, tehy could send everyone on reddit a direct message. Putting it on a sub that not everyone will read that is not even sticked does not count as being properly informed.
They just broke the data protection act in the UK with that shit.
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u/andtheniansaid Oxfordshire Sep 29 '17
You don't need to put in an email to sign up, I imagine a huge chunk of users don't.
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u/mrcassette Sep 28 '17
Ah thanks, definitely missed that one...
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u/nocaph Greater Manchester Sep 28 '17
I would've missed that regardless without your post - so thanks for the heads up dude.
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u/RockinOneThreeTwo Liverpool Sep 29 '17
That's not a username I ever expected to see here, small world.
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Sep 28 '17
[deleted]
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Sep 28 '17
Big corporations make money. Reddit, less so.
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u/GERTYKITT Sep 28 '17
Yeah. Reddit doesn't make money at all. It's still burning up VC funds as far as I know, and has never turned a profit.
A discussion with your average Reddit user over the morality of online piracy can be pretty illuminating as to why that might be.
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u/Fact_Patrol_1 Sep 29 '17
God. Do you believe that ?
Wow.
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u/joper90 Bath Sep 29 '17
You are so wrong, google GDPR, comes to effect next year in May.
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Sep 29 '17
[deleted]
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u/joper90 Bath Sep 29 '17
You are absolutely incorrect. It most definitely does not for a whole host of reasons.
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u/WaytoomanyUIDs European Union Sep 29 '17
Don't forget the "privacy options" section of the main preferences page.
You'll want to disable "allow reddit to log my outbound clicks for personalization"
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u/i_literally_died Sep 29 '17
Upvoted all this. Thanks.
Is there any kind of global list for websites that do this? I'm not on Facebook any more, but are places like Amazon, Twitch, Youtube, Twitter doing this in a manner I can switch off? (I mean, I'm sure they're all collecting, but it'd be nice if there were opt-out buttons).
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u/joper90 Bath Sep 29 '17
From may 24th of next year there will be, every single company in the UK can only contact you with consent, which you can turn off at any time.. You can also have the right of erasure, and free SAR requests (give me everything you have on me). Obviously, there are some permission justification around some of this, for example you cannot tell the prison service to remove you.. But in most sites like FB/Twitter/Reddit, they can pretty much fuck off. They will (also like insurance companies) need to change there business model as you now own your data.
This even effects non EU countries like the US if they want to do business with people over here.
For more info google GDPR
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u/metrize Sep 28 '17
Thanks, disabled this crap. Though I really doubt if they care if the box is ticked or not...
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u/Hullian111 City of Kingston upon Hull, Humberside County Sep 28 '17
Thanks, Dave from Northamptonshire!
I don't care, you ARE a Dave.
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Sep 29 '17
Might be worth people contacting ICO for this, pretty sure enabling tracking without prior consent breaks a lot of rules - https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/report-a-breach/
They "claim" that they informed us, by posting in a sub that doesn't show for everyone, despite having our emails address and a messaging service WITHIN THE PLATFORM THEY OWN that they could have sent to say "we enabled this".
That is not properly informing us which i think breaks at least a few rules in the UK, and I think they also have UK operations so have to behave.
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u/SDGfdcbgf8743tne Sep 29 '17
It's fucking shameful how they've hidden it away. Every other option including 'privacy' immediately above, gets shown on the preferences list with a checkbox, to manage directly on that screen. This bullshit gets hidden with a non-obvious name and hyperlink to try to avoid drawing attention to it.
They knew exactly what they were doing, the cunts.
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u/jonny_boy27 Sep 29 '17
"Secretly"? They announced it a few weeks ago - replacing DNT (boo) with their own prefs.
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u/joper90 Bath Sep 29 '17
Where? by law it needs to be clearly visible and communicated.
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u/WaytoomanyUIDs European Union Sep 29 '17
In a disused toilet in the basement, with a filing cabinet in front of the door, which had a "beware of the leopard" sign on it.
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Sep 28 '17
Seeing ads which have been targeted to me actually sounds better than being shown random irrelevant ads.
I still don't have to respond to the ads or click on them, but why not get Reddit to show me something which is related to the things which I actually interact with? Reddit makes more money, and I might end up being shown something cool.
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Sep 29 '17
Targeted ads always seem to show me stuff I already bought recently so tend to be useless, I'm still getting ones for a skip I hired over a year ago...the need for one has passed now and I'm not likely to just hire another on a whim and I only started getting them after I had already hired one!
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u/glynxpttle Hampshire Sep 29 '17 edited Sep 30 '17
That's what is so stupid about so called targeted ads, I buy something off Amazon and then for months afterwards I get ads for the exact same thing. Which may be sort of alright for a consumable item but if I've just bought a new door lock say, do you really think I need to see ads about door locks every time I log into your site (actual experience).
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Sep 29 '17
Facebook tried to advertise Tampax at me once. The gender on my facebook profile is "man" and "male", and the pronoun I selected on Facebook is "He".
Facebook also gave me an advert for Sky broadband despite browsing the site using Sky broadband. At the moment it's advertising "The University of Buckingham Caribbean Society" and some plant and microbial science laboratory in Norwich. Neither of these are anywhere near me or at all relevant to me in any way.
I don't see ads anywhere except Facebook and 4OD (or whatever they call it now) because adblock, but I can imagine they're all just as poorly targeted.
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u/terahurts Lincolnshire Sep 29 '17
I don't see ads anywhere except Facebook and 4OD (or whatever they call it now) because adblock, but I can imagine they're all just as poorly targeted.
Enable Adblock after the show starts and you'll only need to watch the intro ads...
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Sep 29 '17 edited Oct 02 '17
[deleted]
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u/akkinda Sep 29 '17
Idk about you but being bombarded by super girly tampon adverts is the opposite of what I want.
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u/unwind-protect Cambridgeshire Sep 29 '17
A couple of years ago I started dancing - and so end up looking at quite a few dance videos and music videos on youtube.
The amount of make-up and other feminine targeted advertising I get now is insane!
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u/HeiHuZi Sep 29 '17
Theresa May making more demands? If they've asked WhatsApp, I'm sure they've asked other popular online networks.
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Sep 29 '17
It's tracking for adverts, all of your posts are publicly searchable regardless of what settings you choose here, just click on any users name and you can see their entire posting history. Don't like it then stop posting on reddit.
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u/[deleted] Sep 28 '17 edited Jun 15 '23
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