Why does fluther have a link to data-miner quantserve.com?

Where are you seeing these links?

If you’re talking about the ‘ask on Facebook’ option, that was put in place long before the Twitter deal. We also have an ‘ask on Twitter’ option. If that’s not what you’re talking about, I’m not sure what you mean.

I am using a plug in for firefox called collusion which displays third party tracking in real time—learned about it from john powell

Ok, hmm. I’ll have to look into it, because I have no clue! I’ll try to find out for you.

You would be really surprised who has stuff tracked.
For instance, newspapers, like the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal, have so many third-party trackers that it stalls them while they seek customized ads before they scroll down a news story.

I don’t know what this link does if it isn’t installed w/firefox on your own computer but this is collusion
resource://jid1-f9uj2thwoam5gq-at-jetpack/collusion/data/ui/index.html

Yeah, they use quantserve to get info about traffic. You can see what is collected here. I use Request Policy to block all that crap. Request Policy can be a real pain in the ass to train so if you are concerned I would go with the much easier to use Ghostery.

@johnpowell thanks for showing me what they collect. I still wonder why they do.
Maybe for funding? but wasn’t google analytics enough for that?

Yeah, we do use quantserve to gain insight into our user-base. As for why it’s done, I’m not really sure.

I did learn some interesting things about fluther’s user base—
1.users are evenly spread among all age brackets—slight pref young adults
2 users are fairly evenly distributed by sex, slightly more females
3 users are predominantly in the lower income ranges [below 50k]
4 users slightly predominantly college educated [including graduate school]
5 users reflect American ethnic population with slight predominance of caucasian
6 users slightly less likely to have children

this is composition [on 2nd screen] different from internet average

Are data miners like coal miners?

I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold.

@zensky I thought he was talking about the STTNG episode where a child began dressing up like and behaving like Data, thus becoming a Data Minor.

@filmfann I lololo’d.

@filmfann Rimshot

Gotta be carful.

And just for a frame of reference. Here is what other sites do.

Huffington Post
Wall Street Journal
TechCrunch
Mashable

So Fluther could be worse.

But I really don’t want other sites knowing what I visit. You know those Facebook like buttons? When you see one Facebook knows what sites outside of Facebook you visit and that is all kinds of fucked up.

Install Ghostery so shit like tracking won’t happen.

@johnpowell Thanks for the recommendation. After installing Ghostery, I was given a list of related applications. One of them replaces Facebook “like” buttons with a local copy. Does Ghostery make this redundant, or would it be a good idea to add this as well?

Honestly, I do not know so I will not offer untested advice. My gut tells me not to install it. But I could be wrong.

I would go the a site like theverge.com and see what it blocks. Here is what I get.

In the Preferences I blocked everything.

@johnpowell I got the same results (also blocking everything). Then I installed the I Like Privacy application and noticed that the “Facebook Social Plugin” entry in Ghostery’s alert window disappeared (because it was being blocked by the other application). So it looks like Ghostery does make I Like Privacy redundant. I’ll be uninstalling the extraneous program now.

Sounds good.

And another benefit is that you aren’t loading up tons of crap that slows your computer down. Here is what Quantcast loads when you visit Fluther.

Download the Firefox plug in called PrivacyChoice TrackerBlock.

I do not allow 3rd party cookies. My Collusion chart is much simpler now.

I reset Collusion. I went to Fluther, then went to The Verge. The only tracking I see is a single link to scorecardresearch from the Verge.

Is there anything that iPhone users or those with Android tablets can do to get rid of this crap?

IOS is pretty zippy but the stock Android browser is like molasses in January. Much worse since ICS update. Frequent freezes lockups and stalls. Ridiculous.

Are there any apps for this for either Android or IOS?