[Web4lib] [web4lib] survey on library website third party analytics privacy concerns

[Robert Balliot]

There is no privacy on the Internet.  You might be able to use
Tor<http://www.torproject.org/> to orchestrate
a certain level of anonymity and use encryption and https to hide
information in transit, but you can't have a reasonable expectation that
using a Library website is private other than it being somewhat private
within a library network.

Given the proliferation of personal information on social network sites,
many users have seemed to value their immediate social status much more
highly than their privacy. The burden is on the user.

R. Balliot
http://oceanstatelibrarian.com


On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 4:09 AM, David Kane <dkane at wit.ie> wrote:

> Libraries knowing your IP address is one thing.  I don't think that
> this is a serious issue because no librarian I know is going to pore
> over reams of IP addresses to try and connect particular real
> individuals to possible book crimes.
>
> However, Google analytics works in such a way as to make it possible
> for individual users to be tracked across all sites that use Google
> analytics.  If those users also have Google accounts, as many do, then
> suddenly Google is going to know a lot about you, as an individual.
> Using something else would remove any significant privacy concerns
> that I might have about this.  One such program might  be AWstats,
> which analyses the server log files.
>
> David.
>
> On 25 August 2010 00:12, Brian Tingle <brian.tingle.cdlib.org at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > |There are a number of references to 'privacy concerns' in some of the
> > |responses.
> > |
> > |Do these concerns have any validity, or to they arise from uncertainty
> > |and insufficient understanding of the technologies used to gather these
> > |data?
> >
> > I think that is an open question.  Like most things, there are trade
> offs.
> >
> > As I understand it, German law considers IP addresses to be personally
> > identifying information, and .de web site operators are not allowed to
> > track this.
> >
> >
> http://dees-club.com/google-analytics-german-privacy-paid-analytics-tools/
> >
> > My libraries' current interpretation of privacy policy categorizes IP
> > addresses as personally identifying information.
> >
> > Even if no personally identifying information is logged, research
> > suggests that with enough data tied to a specific yet not personally
> > identified user such as with the cookies used by google analytics,
> > data can be de-anonymized
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal
> >
> http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/12/securitymatters_1213
> >
> > I think it is important that a) library privacy policies clearly
> > indicate the use of google analytics on their websites and b) make it
> > clear to end users that they may opt-out of behavioral tracking
> >
> > http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en
> >
> > I've put in a proposal to have a discussion on this topic at the
> > Digital Library Federation Fall Forum.
> >
> > -- Brian
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Web4lib mailing list
> > Web4lib at webjunction.org
> > http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> David Kane, MLIS.
> Systems Librarian
> Waterford Institute of Technology
> Ireland
> http://library.wit.ie/
> T: ++353.51302838
> M: ++353.876693212
>
>
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