Watching this thread.  

Watching this thread.

Thread?? it's a STITCH.

I started this out of curiosity... I get things out of this website.  I want to offer MRH some way to monetize the work it offers me.  As a thank you and as a way to promote the hobby.

I'd like to know what the website gains through the tiny trackers used... I allowed one prior to my review, now I allow two.  The services SAY  they aggregate information... but it is (as we are learning) possible to sift and sort to determine granular information on individuals. 

So, as I encounter these services elsewhere, are we to trust any and all collected info is benign? 

(I think most hobbies yield benign information, not so with travel, spending phone and photo records).

So... will it be a thread?

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is how a lot of companies, including MRH, track how many visits a website has, where those visitors are going on the website (both in their entry point as well as what they move around to look at), how long they are staying, and where they are coming from (both geographically and on the internet).

It lets us see what's working, what might not be working, where our readers are from, how they got here, and to a limited amount (thus the surveys) their interests.

It's all pretty aggregated at that point, and effectively anonymous, and that's what we can take to our advertisers, and potential advertisers, and say, "we've got this many eyeballs looking at us - would you like this many eyeballs looking at you?" The actual conversation is a bit smoother than that, but both sides know that is what it boils down to. That's where the monetization, as such, comes in.

Not sure what the OpenX is for, I'll leave that to JoeF. I do know that he's a man who loves statistics, and enjoys folding, spindling and mutilating them to see what they tell him about what our readers wants and interests are and how well we are fulfilling them.

Thanks, Jeff...

And I don't care to interfere with that type of info...

My mention of  travel and photos come from a friend of mine, who posts often where he and the family are... thus posting that he is out of town...Far out of town.   Such contemporaneous info should not be public knowledge.   My family will post where we were Last Week... and how nice it was.

OpenX is an advertising

OpenX is an advertising platform. 

OpenX is what we use to serve the ads

Familiar with analytics

I am familiar with Google Analytics and while I generally am not a fan of tracking, it is helpful to a website owner. It shows things like where people are coming from and sometimes provides insight as to who is talking about you when you see a large number of people coming from a particular source but also can be used for much much more. For instance you may remember Joe talking about vendors producing ads that are sub par. Joe could use this to help teach vendors by using two versions of an ad on the site, the original vendor and an improved version. Analytics would show the amount of clicks each. There is a great deal of information available through it but none of it that reveals who you are. As Jeff indicated, it sometimes shows where things aren't going right. It shows where people exited the site from. if you see an unexpected page for people to be exiting the site from and a large number exiting then it would be wise as the owner to check that page and see what is going on because something is probably broken. It really just does a great job of showing the owner how people are using the site. Hope that helps!

All completely anonymous

Yes, the Google Analytics and OpenX data that you receive is all aggregated, which means that to you, we're all completely anonymous. Big deal. Or small comfort.

By accepting that free aggregated data, you're allowing Google and OpenX to collect highly detailed not-so-anonymous data on all your website visitors.

Just thought I'd point it out for those who weren't aware. And for those who were aware and don't care if Sundar is looking over their shoulder every time they connect to the internet, sorry for bringing it up again. Please don't flame me.

There are alternatives to Google Analytics, e.g. Fathom

The bottom line ...

The bottom line, if you think about it for a minute, is they know where you are and how to find you if the internet can send you web pages. If they couldn't find you, then the internet couldn't send you anything.

As soon as you connect to the internet, you are no longer anonymous. If that bothers you, then don't get on the internet. Think back to the days when folks first got a phone. As soon as you have a phone number, people can find you. Even if your number is unlisted, it's still on an official list somewhere and if someone really wants to, they could track down that unlisted list and still find you.

If you don't want to be found, you don't want any wires or plumbing connecting your house to any kind of "grid". That's the only real way to be totally anonymous.

It all gets down to how much you want to trust other entities that provide these services. The internet is just the latest one, and the biggest one, since it's the world wide web.

Your location on the internet is not always exact

Internet services may or may not be able to exactly calculate your physical location on the earth.

If you are using a device connected to a fix-point network, like a home router/wireless access point, that ability depends on how much geolocation information your internet service providers have supplied to the assorted internet geolocation databases that keep track of such stuff. Your home router's location can also be estimated by a number of network services that use various measurements of network traffic. For the geeky folks in the audience, here's an example.

In my case, my location, according to any number of internet programs, seems to cycle between my internet service provider's office in a town about 20 miles to the east, or at some other site even further to the east. When I click on the "my location" button on Google Maps, that's as close as they can get.

Mobile devices are another story altogether. Unless you have turned off location services on your phone, it's constantly updating various applications with your location using all of the tools available to it, such as the GPS, cell tower info, etc... In this case, you control which applications keep track of your location. In the meantime, cell towers are also keeping track of your phone's location because the system has to know where you are in order to route calls. This information is normally only available to the phone companies but various government entities can gain access through an assortment of warrants and other legal means.

If your connection to the internet service provider has a fixed IP address, it's easier for the network to figure out your physical location. If the IP address is one of many in a pool of dynamically allocated addresses and if it changes from time to time, linking a physical address to an IP address is meaningless. My family has a vacation cabin in the wilds of northern Minnesota and I keep an eye on the place by a connection to a web cam over the internet. Whenever the power goes out and comes back on, or for some reason the ISP reboots something, the IP address of the cabin changes and I have to edit my monitoring software.

If you are concerned about your physical address being available to the network, you might want to contact your ISP and ask them if they match up IP address with physical addresses.

There is a saying...

...my father always told me, and I am reminded of it while reading this thread.

"Locks keep honest people, honest".  Now that was about locking ones car door (and there is a long story that I won't share because it would take too long) but very long story very short, my dad had locked cars in his car, and one of the "trustees" as they called them (he was working on a fleet of cars for a sherriff's depart, and the low risk inmates at the County jail would work around the garage the cars were worked on to do janitor and other physical labor), it took the Trustee less than a minute to take a coat hanger, and make the necessary bends in it to unlock the front door of the car! (the police down there were not allowed to use or even have the "slim jims" as I believe they are called)  and the trustee said to my mom "Remember, Locks keep honest people, honest".

What does that have to do with this?  Well, to point out Joe F is absolutely correct. The ONLY WAY to maintain absolute privacy is to stay OFF THE GRID.  In today's world, the moment you connect in any way to the Grid, a savvy person intended on finding you will find a way to do so!!!

Another fistful of sand for the gears

I find many sites request your town... so they can refer the nearest store.

Why use your town?  Use a neighboring town, the info is just as good.

And some merchants price their goods depending on your Zip Code... use a town with poorer demographics... see if pricing changes.   (for that matter, my son notes HobbyKing prices change on things in your cart if you don't check out!)

The internet is full of tools  tricks...   I only desire to know which deck of cards I play with. 

but in a state where license plate readers are used to monitor the movements of Everybody (!), I desire a modicum of privacy (My profile lists a Zip Code... you can look  that up)...  Isolation is  no longer in the cards.  There are services that can point you to an address - as I said in a personal observation above... that service makes it imperative that you do not open up your location to everyone.  Even your photos can carry GPS info.

Thanks, Joe & Jeff, for the info...    If this thread strays further into the weeds, I'd ask to lock it up.

The best is if you work for a

The best is if you work for a company that has sites around the nation or even the world.

My company is headquartered in Palo Alto with major Datacenters in Houston.

Depending on how the internet is routed on a given day, I will go to say HomeDepot.com, or Carmax.com, it will report out my local store as Palo Alto or Houston area.

The worst was when Pandora.com was insistent that I wanted to know about 40+ singles in Palo Alto. I'm married. A 150 mile 3+hour one way commute for a fling with an older (well, older when this happened) woman just seems like a lot of work. (and obviously I wasn't interested anyway...hate to explain the joke, but feel I have too)

Tracking vs information

I am not a fan of being tacked across multiple sites. I actively work to thwart that and if you look at gizmodo's guide for preventing tracking then you can learn how to stop a lot of that. BUT I would caution you that it can hurt places like MRH which relies on that data and the tracking that happens when you click on a vendor ad. Make use of your whitelist. It can make a world of difference to some sites. If I go to someplace Amazon or such though I have everything blocked that I can blocked. Google can't tell if you bought the items you looked at or not...I don't want to see ads for weeks for a purchase I just made so I make sure they just don't know anything.

thanks, Wabash!

Location information

There are a few companies out there that maintain (and sell to other companies) databases of "geographical locations" of IP blocks. Which are only as accurate as the last up date done by the owner of said IP blocks. I work for a phoneco that is also an ISP. One of our blocks is owned by us - and accurately states the town the phoneco is headquartered in. We also offer service in 3 or 4 other named towns... as well, one of our other blocks is on loan from one of our upstream providers, which can result in someone being told they are in a town 40 or so miles away.

AOL customers used to be told they were in Reston, VA, no matter where they dialed in from. This may still be the case.

A major user of these services are weather providers, which is why the weather that pops up on your screen when you go to their webpage (or the webpage of someone using their widget) is sometimes not all that accurate location-wise. And sometimes is.

This can also be a problem if the IP block is sold from one location to another, different geographic, location. All of the sudden the new customers may find certain websites treating them oddly - YouTube, Hulu, etc... can have let you see different things (or block you entirely) based on what country they think you are in.

And the hogwash in modern cop shows where the resident nerd tracks down a perp to their physical address by their IP address in 30 seconds is just that - hogwash.

I always laugh about this

I always laugh about this sort of thing. I have an address on the mailbox in front of my house. I can find it on google earth. The privacy thing is a bit tough if you have a job, credit scores, credit cards, utility bills etc. But then it is not so tough either, you see there are so many folks out there why would someone be interested in me? Unless someone is looking for you intentionally you are just another blade of grass in the huge area that is the great plains of the United States.

I sometimes think the folks trying to be most secretive are often attracting attention to themselves.

Why are the standards different on the internet?

So to build on the telephone analogy: when I got a telephone, the phone company didn't record all my calls and analyze them to build a profile so that they knew my age, my income, my marital status, my political preferences, my sexual orientation, my health, and even a fairly accurate estimate of when I will probably die, and then offered to sell that information to any company willing to pay (my insurance company would probably be really interested, for example).

It's true, the few clicks you make here on MRH won't contribute much to Google's profile of you. And please don't get angry, I'm just the messenger. I'm just trying to counter the naive idea that Google gives its users stuff for free, when in fact their users give them something extremely valuable that historically, people would have considered to be an extreme invasion of privacy. I'm not trying to be secretive, as some suggest (you can probably find out a lot about me with just a few clicks). But this thread is probably a good example of how little people understand what's actually going on. It's been said before, but bears repeating: if they're giving you something for free, you're probably the product, not the customer.

If a person stood peeking in your window to find out what you're watching on TV, I suspect you'd call the police. Why are the standards different on the internet?

Ok, I've probably upset too many people. I probably shouldn't have allowed myself to get dragged into an internet privacy debate, which is always a losing proposition -- where people accuse you of being paranoid or secretive. The point of my original post was to simply point out that in spite of the reassurance that the data is anonymous, it's not.

You can kick me off now, and lock the thread.

Telephone company

They didn't do it because they didn't realize they could make money with it, and you were already paying them for the phone service.

If you want to be private on the internet use an anonymizer site and don't create any accounts anywhere for any reason.