I learned at my first web dev job that no one outside the dev/marketing sphere knows just how much of their visit to e-commerce sites is tracked.
From technologies like Hotjar that record your mouse movements on a given webpage, to simple IP address logging (who visited this page on our site, from what referrer, etc.), people really have no clue how closely their actions are being monitored.
However, as with lots of data analysis, their personal information alone means almost nothing. Their data in the aggregate of all visitors' data is valuable for analyzing conversion rates, if and how their banners are working, etc.
I can't speak to the ethics of this, nor do I care to. I don't believe it's right to track so much interaction without duly notifying the customer it's happening, but I have very little aside from a sense of common courtesy to back that belief up.
The experience has given me a new appreciation for JavaScript blocker extensions, which before I had believed are no longer really needed. It's also given me an insight as to the value of an e-commerce page over a physical store location.
For example: Say I go to my local Target. If I'm looking at cameras, and the sales person asks if I need any help, or whatever, and I say no, they go away, and the interaction is over.
But lets say I go to their website. Immediately, a personal session with this page is created for me, even though I don't know it. I'm tracked from the home page, to their electronics sections, to the Camera subsection. My movements in figuring out the search filters is being tracked, my mouse movements over the available products is tracked, all adding data to create a "heatmap" of that webpage.
Even if I don't buy a thing, I've given them little pieces of information to be used in analyzing their site. My visit will be considered a failure to their marketers, and the data surrounding my failure to buy will be used to retool their site in the hopes of getting people like me next time.
The level of tracking on internet is reaching all time highs (just like stock market).. Right from big guns from FANG to the site that was just launched.
I've seen presentations where the user's mouse journey were captured and decisions like making page faster(so they dont wander around while it gets loaded) and putting important stuff on top left corner since most of the users click or point there first..
The future looks only terrifying, esp when when a new "pied piper" level internet consortium gets formed by/between FANG(wildest dream) and they share the data among themselves (this is nutso level dream) ... but only future can tell
I'll probably lose 20 points of karma for daring to defy consensus, but: I really don't understand the terror around my mouse being tracked as I hover over a page, or around on an commerce site. Why is this supposed to bother me so much? And judging from the ads I'm served, they aren't figuring out very much about me at all. The most that happens is that if a female friend sends me a lingerie link, then I see lingerie ads everywhere for a week. Lately I've been served ads for Jewish religious garments. I'm not Jewish. They aren't collecting enough information on me, frankly.
It's about whose hands this information gets into. When all the data that is being collected on you is combined and cross-referenced with various data sources, you can end up finding all sorts of information about someone like their habits, their lifestyle, medical information, location history, among other things. All this data is sitting out there being sold and brokered to companies or governments who are definitely not using this data in a way that benefits you. Not to mention most of these datasets are not being protected and getting leaked all the time. You may not be a political target or religious dissident where this information can you killed but you are still not benefiting from these data insights being available on the open market. At the very least, you should be able to choose or get paid for this valuable information.
Thanks for your comments, just want to discuss one piece:
> However, as with lots of data analysis, their personal information alone means almost nothing.
I think this is not true because of fingerprinting -- sites and services want to track who is the same visitor across multiple visits and locations. In other words, the situation is even worse than you've described because it's not just used in aggregate, but really to track you personally as well.
From technologies like Hotjar that record your mouse movements on a given webpage, to simple IP address logging (who visited this page on our site, from what referrer, etc.), people really have no clue how closely their actions are being monitored.
However, as with lots of data analysis, their personal information alone means almost nothing. Their data in the aggregate of all visitors' data is valuable for analyzing conversion rates, if and how their banners are working, etc.
I can't speak to the ethics of this, nor do I care to. I don't believe it's right to track so much interaction without duly notifying the customer it's happening, but I have very little aside from a sense of common courtesy to back that belief up.
The experience has given me a new appreciation for JavaScript blocker extensions, which before I had believed are no longer really needed. It's also given me an insight as to the value of an e-commerce page over a physical store location.
For example: Say I go to my local Target. If I'm looking at cameras, and the sales person asks if I need any help, or whatever, and I say no, they go away, and the interaction is over.
But lets say I go to their website. Immediately, a personal session with this page is created for me, even though I don't know it. I'm tracked from the home page, to their electronics sections, to the Camera subsection. My movements in figuring out the search filters is being tracked, my mouse movements over the available products is tracked, all adding data to create a "heatmap" of that webpage.
Even if I don't buy a thing, I've given them little pieces of information to be used in analyzing their site. My visit will be considered a failure to their marketers, and the data surrounding my failure to buy will be used to retool their site in the hopes of getting people like me next time.