

Twitter is tracking you on the web - phillco
http://dcurt.is/twitter-is-tracking-you-on-the-web

======
zxypoo
<https://twitter.com/twitter/status/203255213946187777>

"Widget Data: We may tailor content for you based on your visits to third-
party websites that integrate Twitter buttons or widgets. When these websites
first load our buttons or widgets for display, we receive Log Data, including
the web page you visited and a cookie that identifies your browser ("Widget
Data"). After a maximum of 10 days, we start the process of deleting or
aggregating Widget Data, which is usually instantaneous but in some cases may
take up to a week. While we have the Widget Data, we may use it to tailor
content for you, such as suggestions for people to follow on Twitter. Tailored
content is stored with only your browser cookie ID and is separated from other
Widget Data such as page-visit information. This feature is optional and not
yet available to all users. If you want, you can suspend it or turn it off,
which removes from your browser the unique cookie that enables the feature.
Learn more about the feature here. For Tweets, Log Data, and other information
that we receive from interactions with Twitter buttons or widgets, please see
the other sections of this Privacy Policy."

~~~
jnorthrop
Thank you for highlighting that section. I'm surprised dcurtis left out this
nugget.

> After a maximum of 10 days, we start the process of deleting or aggregating
> Widget Data

This make is much less nefarious. I guess it isn't much of a story when you
have the full context. They are only keeping it for 10 days. Sure they are
still aggregating data but at that point it is anonymized data.

------
naner
_Basically, every time you visit a site that has a follow button, a “tweet
this” button, or a hovercard, Twitter is recording your behavior. It is
transparently watching your movements and storing them somewhere for later
use._

Of course. This is likely true for all social buttons, not just Twitter. I've
never known a social site to throw away free user-related data.

------
DanielRibeiro
But it also _Implements Do Not Track Privacy Option_ [1]

[1] [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/twitter-
implements-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/twitter-implements-
do-not-track-privacy-option/)

------
TomGullen
Twitter is tracking me like Google is reading my emails.

> The privacy implications of such behavior by a company so large are sweeping
> and absolute.

Like most articles about tracking cookie this, and tracking widget that, it
does come off as overly sensationalist to me and makes me think it's meant to
scare people more than they should be about such a thing.

> Is it okay for Twitter to sell your web browsing history to advertisers?

Serious question, where are the people/businesses that buy peoples browsing
histories? It's an argument raised a lot of the time as responses to this sort
of thing and I've never seen evidence that a market exists for it.

> I'm amazed that Twitter is overtly admitting to this behavior without
> considering the privacy implications.

This is a bit of a confusing sentence, do you expect them to hide it? Or what
makes you think they haven't considered privacy implications?

Edit: According to tech crunch they _have_ considered your privacy as they are
having a switch that lets you turn this functionality off:
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/17/twitter-wants-an-
interest-g...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/17/twitter-wants-an-interest-
graph/)

~~~
esrauch
I don't think gmail is exactly analogous, the twitter situation is something
that you can't avoid in all of your activity anywhere on the web; simply
having a twitter account at all makes every website a tracker, and you have
absolutely no way of knowing until you get to the site and it's already too
late.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Don't stay logged in. Use NoScript. Delete cookies from Twitter. No tracking
remaining.

Though it is easier to enable "Do not track" in your browser for the Twitter
case.

------
DigitalSea
Oh, look another Dustin Curtis blog post on Hacker News, again. While some of
the things Dustin says are true and interesting, this post assumes we're all
idiots that don't know that companies like Twitter are tracking user
information. What's the big deal here? Oh, Twitter will know what links or
sites I'm visiting? Good for them, if they find that information valuable then
so-be-it.

I think it's more than obvious Dustin is targeting his posts at the HN
community who lap them up, it's all just too easy for him now. Sorry about
that rant.

------
cmod
This issue raised here is nothing new or specific to Twitter. (Not that it
makes it any less concerning.)

Here's an article from over a year ago talking about how Facebook does the
very same thing with their like button:
[http://www.geek.com/articles/news/facebook-like-button-
track...](http://www.geek.com/articles/news/facebook-like-button-tracks-you-
even-if-you-dont-click-20110519/)

"Any time the Like button is displayed, information is zapped back to
Facebook’s servers. As long as you’ve been logged into the site in the past
month, Facebook happily continues warehousing your whereabouts."

------
masterleep
Does the Firefox 'No 3rd Party Cookies' setting avoid Twitter-tracking?

~~~
esrauch
Yes, the No 3rd Party Cookies stops the twitter buttons on other sites from
working at all.

~~~
GoodIntentions
It doesn't matter if you accept cookies or not. If the site you visits
presents content ( script, button, whatever ) served from another site, you
may be tracked server side via log + all the goodies in your request header.

~~~
esrauch
With No third party cookies enabled, the only thing the hosts of the other
content should get is IP address. It's possible that they are storing that and
cross-referencing against the ip logs otherwise but that would lead to a lot
more embarrassing situations considering how much more likely it is that 2
different people are behind the same NAT than logged in to the same account,
and it would be explicitly going out of their way to track people who clearly
were trying to opt out.

------
BillSaysThis
Surprising someone as experienced in the web would post a rant like this when
not only do Facebook, Google and other large/"webscale" sites, but also much
smaller ones that participate in ad networks.

When I worked at Glam Media we were given a presentation on the ecosystem
related to our ad networks and let me tell you the presenter (a VP or C-Level)
couldn't come close to fitting all the logos on a moderately large screen.

Bottom line is unless you take substantial measures to avoid tracking you are
going to be tracked by many interested parties, both direct and indirect!

------
LocalPCGuy
A lot of outrage for something that many other websites are also doing, and an
acknowledged behavior by any of the major companies running social networks
with social widgets - i.e. Google, Facebook, etc.

Heck, Google recently got in trouble because they were using a fairly standard
technique that got around the third-party cookie blocking in Safari, and
Facebook had to admit that they are able to track users who are logged out,
presumably by comparing IP addresses of those who load the widgets against IP
addresses of users when they are logged in.

------
zacharyvoase
OK, so it's not exactly news. But we only have these 'privacy implications'
because our browsers give mines of information to any website that cares to
ask for it. GET requests used to be seen as OK to make on behalf of a user,
but these days I feel that the hostname in my location bar should be the
_only_ one I send any HTTP requests to, for a given page.

------
s4nchez
I love the irony of @dcurtis complaining about twitter dirty tricks while
trying to get "Kudos" using a scammy widget.

------
ericflo
So is every advertising network. This really isn't new, but it's certainly
over-sensationalized.

------
jr62
This is certainly no worse than what Facebook's collecting, and their opt-out
controls mean there's not a lot to be worried about.

If you're really paranoid about privacy you should be concerned about Google,
not Twitter. Try counting the number of websites with Google Analytics or
AdSense (or Google-hosted jQuery, or a +1 button...)

------
wamatt
What would be surprising Mr Curtis, is if Twitter _wasn't_ tracking it's
users.

------
46Bit
Duh. As dumb a comment as that seems, I'm sticking with it.

------
shpoonj
Curtis lives in his own little bubble where the average internet user is
COMPLETELY unaware of the possibility that they're being watched. Even my
parents, who are nontechnical, in the mid 90s, would warn me about these sorts
of things.

Regardless, Twitter went about this the proper way and I'm glad they're doing
what they're doing. Happy to have the Do Not Track option too.

Nice sensationalist story though... what will he throw a fit over next time?

