Today I set some time aside to go sign up for some of the VRM-y services I’ve been reading about. There’s a lot of good stuff out there but I did find something puzzling. I run Ghostery. On these sites that practice a VRM philosophy, I expected to find social widgets. Shoot, you almost can’t exist on the web without a slew of “like” and “share” buttons. But what I didn’t expect to find was trackers. But I did and on most of the sites I visited. While it’s true that all these sites had no more than one or two non-social Ghostery hits, why do they have even one? For example, while on the miicard privacy page, where the text says “From the details you choose to verify your identity to the information you share, miicard puts you in charge at every stage,” Ghostery blocks ChartBeat and Pardot (as well as expected widgets from Facebook, G+ and LinkedIn). http://i.imgur.com/ygMaodd.png There’s nothing I could find on the web site that mention ChartBeat or Pardot as partners nor explain what is shared with them. Although it’s true that it isn’t *miicard* releasing my data (ChartBeat & Pardot collect it directly), it is true that miicard intentionally chose to embed stealth analytics and tracking on the very page that explains how they protect your their privacy and identity. So I have to ask… am I the only who looks at these things when signing up? Or am I completely misunderstanding the philosophy of VRM in my expectation of how my data is collected and shared? -- T.Rob (PS - Sorry miicard to single you out. I found this on most sites I visited today but your privacy page had the largest delta between perception and reality, as seen in the image. I didn’t think a name-and-shame spree would be productive and if the tracking on miicard is deemed acceptable by the community here then it will be on the other sites as well. In that case, I’ll have to go re-read Intention Economy and the VRM web site because I’ll have completely misunderstood the intent.) |
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