This year I took digital privacy more seriously. I started reading privacy policies. I started to be more conscious of the JavaScript that runs behind the scenes for every webpage I loaded. I started thinking about how online services make money to provide a free service. I started to re-think my association with Big Tech. In this post, I'll boil some of it down so that hopefully a layman/laywoman will understand. I'm a bit hesitant to post this because I don't know how it's going to be received so… YOLO. (Is YOLO still a thing…?)
Business model
There's a common saying that apparently originated from even before the first days of the internet that goes something like this - "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product".
Online services need some form of revenue to stay afloat. How does OzBargain do it? I found a post in 2013 that asked this very question.
@neil:
Yep, Google Ads + Affiliate links for non-logged in users.
@scotty
Yes it's based on volume. On an average day maybe 5-6 out of every 1,000 visitors click on ads, so to keep OzBargain alive we need to make sure it's popular enough. To keep it popular we need to make sure that it's useful and don't piss off too many people :)
As of server costs, I got many ways to save money there. Maybe I will find sometime to discuss and share that with the community.
A lot can change in 7 years. I would be interested to hear what's changed since that thread and if scotty ever did share how he saves on server costs. I'm not surprised at all with these responses.
Privacy policy
Okay, let's get to the thing that absolutely no one reads - the Privacy Policy. Firstly, I want to commend the OzBargain team for a super concise rundown. It's been written in a way such that someone with a basic level of technical knowledge will understand and it isn't just a page of legalese. Fantastic.
What, in my opinion, is actually noteworthy in there?
Third party cookies
Nothing unexpected given the business model I found earlier. There are some disclaimers that some third party cookies will be used. The section also goes on about Google's involvement.
Use of information
Here is the key line I looked for:
Under no circumstances will any of your personal information be passed on or sold to any third party, at any time.
Great! That's exactly what I wanted to see.
What actually goes on in the background?
Everything so far seems reasonable to me. Even though privacy policies are supposed to be a legal document, companies can lie.
A tool I like to run to get a general idea of how intrusive a website is is The Markup's Blacklight (clicking this link will run their tool against OzBargain). For anyone interested, I suggest actually going to the tool and reading what it has to say. What do the results look like? Here it is slightly dumbed down:
22 Ad trackers found on this site. This is more than the average of seven that we found on popular sites.
51 Third-party cookies were found. This is more than the average of three that we found on popular sites.
This website loads trackers on your computer that are designed to evade third-party cookie blockers.
This site allows Google Analytics to follow you across the internet.
😱 <—- This is how I would react if I didn't know better.
What do I know?
The above analysis would be from the perspective of a user who isn't logged in. Registered users can turn off ads. Whether or not the tracking is actually less aggressive for a logged in user, I have no idea. This is quite irrelevant to me since I browse OzBargain without logging in more than when I am logged in.
The main point is… OzBargain is super functional with JavaScript fully disabled. Sure, you lose the dynamic menus but the speed gain is tremendous. (I don't know if the OzBargain team appreciates me sharing this little secret since it does affect their revenue with more people doing it. I won't be offended if they delete this.) Cookies are easy to handle. I use an extension on Firefox called Temporary Containers. If Temporary Containers looks too complex, another great extension for managing cookies is Cookie AutoDelete. Most web browsers these days can isolate third party cookies and when combined with no JavaScript, it renders almost all tracking to be useless. You still need to be aware that you'll be followed everywhere based on your IP address.
The thread was originally intended to commend the OzBargain team in how they make it reasonably easy for privacy-minded people to opt out of aggressive web tracking. Hopefully that's the way it was always intended. I then decided to go down the rabbit hole of sharing every other thought I've had about OzBargain's interactions with a user's privacy. I honestly wish the rest of the internet was the same way.
YOGO trumps YOLO.