How to track users for analytics in a privacy-first, cookie-less future
https://www.narrator.ai/blog/how-to-track-users-for-analytics-in-a-privacy-first-cookie-less-future/
I found him. I found the apex douchebag.
“our customers are able to stitch historical anonymous data to 95% of their converted users–this is even in the last few weeks after all the Apple device and browser privacy updates.”
https://www.narrator.ai/blog/how-to-track-users-for-analytics-in-a-privacy-first-cookie-less-future/
Fuck these people.
@aral Also 95% is awful.
It's 95% of single-session if the user does something identifiable. You don't get previous sessions of that user, and the majority of users don't convert.
We left the era of single-channel attribution a long time ago, you want to be able to combine display, ppc, email, into a single funnel. This does not do that.
@Eden So you’re saying he’s just a garden-variety douchebag?
@aral Basically, yes. He's bragging that it's a lot more significant than it is.
When I left marketing, the pitch I was trying to get through to companies is that user identification is now a deal you strike with the user.
Make your website worth logging into, so that users are trading their privacy for features.
Marketers would rather do *this*. It barely works, and it's just about tricking the client
@aral I've talked about this a few times, but the traditional ways of doing this have always been stitching together IDs across multiple areas.
What was common was using third and first party IDs as a master key, so that if both IDs changed at different times you could keep tracking the user.
Or emailing a user a link with their user id embedded in it worked well, because you can then tie that session to an actual person, worked well for cross device.
@aral The more nefarious fingerprinting never seemed to take off with anyone I worked with, I think everyone just saw it as a bit weird and a PR issue.
Then a lot more apps took off because the Android ID could be nabbed fairly easily. I wonder if companies will stop bothering with apps now that that ID is harder to use for marketing.
@aral something that makes me sad is that similar techniques could probably be used to stitch together all the bad behaviors the rich elites exhibit through their shell companies or whatever they do and trace it directly back to them. but no, they use these skills to help those people prey on us.
@aral Thank you for the latest guide. I hope I am in the 5% by using URL strippers, email cloaking, and other tools when not on TOR.
@aral
Isn't it a good thing they say it out loud?
Everybody is/was already doing it and that's a/the (big) problem.
Any sense of morals appears to be completely absent with capitalism :-/
And people who believe that 'anonymous' (or 'anonymized') data exists, are delusional.
So I consider it a positive that someone sets the record straight.
@FreePietje It’s always good when a Martin Shkreli pops up to make it impossible to ignore how horrible certain industries are, yes.
@aral
`Using the unique (non-PII!) identifiers in the URL` 🤣
I'd really like to see his face when a lawyer tells him that unique identifiers are always PII and he still needs consent for this.
@aral @Framasoft
I just started a WordPress blog. Any good link on how to set up privacy friendly statistics tool to still have a rough idea of which posts are more or less popular? Then from these data's, how do we know, or is there statistics about if they are real reader or bots, maybe the view duration might be useful, is it possible without cookie and without tracking people specifically?
@eluc @Framasoft Take a look at @plausible :)
@aral This is kinda funny.
1. Move cookies into URLs
2. Stitch other IDs with the URL ID
It's basically reusing the old techniques for crossdevice, but on weaker signals.