[foxfired]

I've always added analytics scripts on websites I worked on. It was second nature for me. Then when I got my own start up, I didn't just add regular analytics but one that tracks mouse movements so you can watch sessions back like a video [0].

I told a friend about my start up and she jumped on it immediately. I opened the tool and watched her interaction. Then I told her "oh so you opened the dev tools" She immediately ended the session. "How did you know? That's creepy". It was the first time I've actually felt like these tools invade privacy.

Yeah, we include it in our terms and condition and privacy page, but I don't think users truly grasp how those tools work. I understand that all analytics tools provide this feature now, but its always creepy to know someone can watch what you are doing.

[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/spying-on-your-user

[jrowen]

I think there's a very interesting duality forming around privacy. It seems like most people don't really care if they're being filmed, or if their data is being slurped up six ways from Sunday, as long as it's aggregated and going through automated systems. But as soon as it feels like an actual person is looking at individual behavior, it's creepy (which is, of course, always a possibility, but plausible deniability is a powerful thing).

[singpolyma3]

Yes. This is it. People are used to "private conversation in public restaurant". It's not private because no one can hear, but because no one is listening.

[vitally3643]

Right, the very nature of human society for the last several thousand years has been privacy in public. You walk around outside where everyone can see you, but the societal expectation is that you don't watch others. You have conversations in public because that's where life happens, but they're still private conversations.

Every counter-example to this is people being intentionally creepy, inappropriate, or outright malicious. Which was a manageable problem when it was just a single dude being weird, society would eventually exclude and shun them. Trouble is today that we've mechanised malicious inappropriate behavior at scale and ensured we've set up our entire society and government such that the people responsible can never be held accountable in any way. So long as you're being maliciously creepy at scale (and you're wealthy) everything's fine and there's no consequences.

[dpoloncsak]

> Every counter-example to this is people being intentionally creepy, inappropriate, or outright malicious

Or you just...overhear something in public and strike up a conversation. Doesn't happen here in North-East USA often but that southern hospitality is a different animal

[dools]

I think creepiness manifests when the observation is one way. Without technology that’s kind of hard. With tech it becomes increasingly easy for everyday people to one-way spy on each other

[fwipsy]

How do you know what life was like 2000 years ago? I don't think you can truly know when this convention appeared. I suspect it's tied to urbanism at least. If you're living alone in the woods, miles from anywhere, and someone walks past your house, you're probably not going to politely ignore them.

[miki123211]

The other side of this is that there are aspects of privacy that average people absolutely care about, but that the tech crowd largely ignores.

It's things like hiding your online activity from your partner / boss / parent / ex, making sure nobody knows you just went to a gay club, hiding the fact that you're playing video games from that one guy you don't actually want to play with, not giving out your phone number to the parents of your students, that sort of thing.

For most people, E2E and VPNs are useless gimmicks that just make life unnecessarily difficult, but vanishing messages and incognito mode are life-saving features.

[latexr]

> It seems like most people don't really care if they're being filmed, or if their data is being slurped up six ways from Sunday

For the majority of people I don’t think it’s true that they don’t care, but rather that they don’t know, don’t understand the implications, or don’t have the luxury of being able to do anything about it.

In the instances where I was able to have a longer discussion with someone to really explain what’s going on, they did care. Even if they previously said they didn’t.

[ryukoposting]

Or, they do know and they do care, but they're so exhausted by the hostile patterns of our industry that they've given up.

[jrowen]

People do know on some level though. There was enough willpower to get the cookie bullshit on every website.

I think it's just that it's more of a visceral lizard-brain thing than a logical thing. Like how you can go through life eating meat every day, then someone sits you down and tells you the horrors of that industry and shows you a cow being butchered, and you go oh that's horrible, and then most likely put it out of mind and continue eating meat.

[m463]

it's not a duality at all. the people don't know.

the people doing the "analytics" (surveillance) like their privacy too, because they are doing creepy stuff and don't want people to know it. And even if they aren't doing creepy stuff, the data might be used that way in the future (profile building, psychological tricks, personalized pricing, sharing behavior with others, etc)

[raverbashing]

Yes - also it's one thing to say "A user entered the site, clicked here than here" (analyzed in bulk) and another "this specific guy entered the site, clicked here than here"

[iamacyborg]

Which is wild because the aggregation and “big data” element is where the harm actually happens in very real terms. Of course, much harder to explain to typical laymen.

[Rygian]

> we include it in our terms and condition and privacy page, but I don't think users truly grasp how those tools work

Since you did collect the metrics, you had direct knowledge of how many users opened the T&C and scrolled down to the place where you mention you're recording their session.

Would be interesting if you can share an aggregate statistic of that.

[kmoser]

They may have scrolled down to it but that doesn't mean they read it. And even if they read it, they may not have understood it.

[account42]

And the same goes for other would be conclusions people think they get from their invasive telemetry.

[htx80nerd]

Everyone knows stores have security cameras. But if you called them up and said 'I saw you pick up the chips' they wouldnt have a good feeling.

Everyone understands websites use analytics and tracking, but people dont want to be reminded of it. Which is why people hate those FB ads which exactly match what you searched for 24 hours ago.

[philipwhiuk]

> Everyone understands websites use analytics and tracking, but people dont want to be reminded of it.

People don't want it to be misused is the actual point.

[ivanjermakov]

I'm surprised browsers don't warn users about every website that has listeners attached to keyboard/mouse events. It's totally fine for something like a game or an experiment website, but might not be something you expect from a blog or a news site.

[account42]

At some point we really need to split websites from web applications as a concept.

[Sophira]

> Yeah, we include it in our terms and condition and privacy page

Please be honest with yourself. People don't read terms and conditions. There's a good chance you don't read terms and conditions. And even if you do, odds are better than even that you don't fully understand all the legal implications.

Terms and conditions pages nowadays are there mostly to provide legal protection under the guise of "the user told us that they read these by ticking a box on our signup page; it's hardly our fault if they didn't."

[dheera]

I'm also of the opinion that at lot of T&C are basically signing under duress and I consider them invalid. Like if I have to sign a T&C with Google Play and a T&C with your city's sanctioned parking app in order to park on the street, I consider both of those T&C's invalid. As a legal resident of the country with a legally owned car and legal driving license, I should be able to park and pay, I shouldn't have to agree to anything else.

[somewhatgoated]

By reading this website, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

[taneq]

Especially clickthrough license for software on devices that you've already bought. You turn on your new phone and it shows 300 pages of legalese. You cannot use your new phone until you press 'I accept.' If you don't like it, return the phone. All the other phones have their own equivalent T&C.

[komali2]

Your city doesn't have a way to pay for parking with cash on public roads? It's not a private lot? That should simply be illegal.

[dheera]

As an example, most of Boston's public street parking meters use a collection of various parking apps. A large number have broken quarter slots and broken card readers but you're still expected to make payment via app or you can get towed.

This is also why I wish we could make anti-towing (anti-car-theft) devices that physically resist and fight the tow people to make their lives uncomfortable and miserable, because predatory jobs like that should just not exist. But any time I suggest this, 5000 people come out of the woods and say "pay your bill" and "don't park where you're not supposed to" whereas my point is really "you shouldn't have to accept a T&C in order to pay for parking" and "you should still have a right to park even if the cash/card reader is broken".

[j2j8]

Cash for parking on streets has gone in many parts of Australia

[bruce511]

Look, I understand the hate against terms and conditions. They're not a lot of fun. But the alternative is worse. Let's imagine a world where terms and conditions don't apply;

Firstly, businesses can do whatever they like. There are no terms to agree to. They simply function in whatever way they "consider to be valid". If a customer disagrees with what is valid or not, hey, that's what courts are for. And given there's no agreement between business and customer, who's to say who is right?

The business can equally terminate you as a customer, with no notice, for no reason, at any time. They can delete all your data. They can spam your contact list. (Ok, they do all that already, but you know what I mean.)

Secondly, customers can do whatever they like. They payed their $9.95. They can do whatever they like. Sure, sharing logins is fine (if they "consider that valid".) They can abuse the system, scrape data out and resell it, anything goes. And of course the only recourse is back to the courts. Which is ultimately no recourse at all.

Even your analogy to parking breaks down. Should you have to prove legal residency to park? Should I be able to park a car on the street (unmoved) for a year? Should I be allowed to park next to a fire-hydrant? Can I park it in the middle of the road? Can my neighbor "reserve" his parking space using an orange cone? Clearly there's a lot more to parking a car than "I should be able to park".

T&C might not be fun, and you may not agree with them (hint: if you don't, then don't use the service) but they at least set out the business behavior that you can expect. Read them, don't read them, that's up to you. But don't complain that the fault is on them when they do something that are in the T&Cs.

And yes, I get they're one sided. customers never bother to submit their own T&C's so they're not fairly represented. Again, that's on you for using that service.

[ezwoodland]

> imagine a world where ...

It already works like that.

> customers never bother to submit their own T&C's so they're not fairly represented

You can't. Not a question of bother.

> if you don't, then don't use the service

The problem is that this is mostly not an option. The service doesn't have competition or competitors don't have better T&C. Sometimes, like in the original commenter's example, there is a legally enforced monopoly.

At least the government has to enforce certain rights when using government provided services.

[matheusmoreira]

> Firstly, businesses can do whatever they like.

Already the case.

Every single terms and conditions document is just legal boilerplate that boils down to "we can do whatever we want, while you can do nothing we don't want".

[Sophira]

The problem with this line of thinking is that businesses don't expect you to read T&Cs.

This site itself is, funnily enough, a good example of this (and, to be fair, an outlier). When you sign up to an account here, you're not asked to agree to any terms. There's nothing that forces you to agree to any terms of service. The site does have them[0], but you can only access them by clicking the "Legal" link in the footer, and you're never required to do so. Yet people here are, by and large, behaving themselves, largely due to good moderation on the part of dang and others.

But if there were to be a lawsuit, for whatever reason, it's potentially possible that someone could successfully argue that they never had to agree to any terms. It's a technicality, of course - again, very few people read terms of service, and if they did, you'd think somebody would have noticed this omission by now - but an arguably legally actionable one.

Which leads me back to my point - the only reason that businesses make you agree to terms of service is because if they didn't, they could get lawsuits that might be found in favour of the plaintiff. Businesses don't want that, so they include the checkbox.

[0] https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/#tou

[radlad]

> They simply function in whatever way they "consider to be valid".

No, they would function in the manner courts deem to be valid.

[klausa]

>Should you have to prove legal residency to park?

...what? How is residency tied to parking now?

[account42]

We really need to update all relevant laws to the same standard as GDPR's "informed consent" where hiding something in a wall of legalese doesn't cut it.

[matheusmoreira]

> Yeah, we include it in our terms and condition and privacy page

Nobody reads that stuff.

[XCSme]

Ethical question: is there a huge difference between seeing the dev tools being opened in a re-created session replay AND simply storing an event with [dev_tools_opened at 1min 3s].

If you have only the event, you can basically re-create a playback of that action if you want.

Now, if you track all actions of interest, than that's basically almost the same as a full session recording.

[wrRS]

Are there any good browser extensions that can block this and protect user privacy?

[matheusmoreira]

uBlock Origin should block it.

[hactually]

yes - a fair few