I do want to mention though, while this is bad, I feel like we're singling out a site. Fact is, I've seen more places where this doesn't happen. Though, not at places that have such a strong social mission as this one. And while I've done my best to work at those places to get it fixed, there is a lot of inertia and simply ignorance. I'm not talking about small places either. I'm talking about non-tech places that make their profit to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The inertia, the fact that no one else seems to care at such a place. It's an issue. Then I'm always the odd one out and looked at funny. When it's fixed no one really gives a shit and now I'm "that guy". A small form of resentment stays in these people.
Just mentioning my experience. It's stuff like this kind of apathy that gets us a world where a place like a suicide hotline just ignorantly does this kind of stuff. Or at least, that's my hypothesis: it's ignorance and apathy.
There's probably not a lot of data on this which is why I'm sharing this anecdata. I hope it's better than nothing.
The 113 suicide prevention hotline works together with professionals but it's not an official health care provider as far as I know.
There are probably plenty of similar websites with similar problems, but 113 is well known within the Netherlands so it's a poignant example to use in the media.
Getting media coverage on this will probably make these organizations do better, at least until the next conversion improvement marketeer gets access to the backend.
Their chat service uses something called "sprinklr.com", blocked by my filters automatically, which calls itself "The definitive AI‑native platform for extraordinary customer experiences".
I suppose there's always the phone number.
Everything takes so long, nobody is held accountable. The most likely result of pushing for any type of positive outcome for basically anything is some form of punishment or social degradation.
And so, as of October 2024, I don't do it anymore.
I will also note that most of the things I see "being corrected" these days are entirely fictitious.
As an example is the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in Canada. They tossed out a valid complaint about Shaw (during Rogers buyout) for jurisdictional reasons. Then they are on the news making odd statements about (exclusively) OpenAI not being honest about using your data?
It's all a show it seems. I figured it needs to get a qhole lot worse before it can get any better.
I have moved to internal tooling creation and have airgapped a machine/tool each month this year so far. Just a laptop and my social phone remain networked.
This is quite sad to think about in multitude of ways :-(
What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice. There are so many competent & great dutch engineers and engineers in general, I refuse to believe that they couldn't find anyone ethical enough to take extra care regarding GDPR and sensitivity of the data in general.
> “At this moment, we are investigating what happened, how this could have occurred, what the potential impact has been, and what our next steps are,” the spokespersons aid. They didn’t say whether the trackers would be turned on again
I hope the investigation that they are saying in the articles goes swiftly to really find out the real reason as to why this ended up happening in first place and the reasons behind it are made public sooner rather than later.
Using GA4 is just the normal thing right?
Look in a room full of marketing experts and they will say yes or shrug.
Look in a room full of tech people and you'll see all security experts and security adjacent people screaming HELL NO or simply giving a nuanced answer that ultimately comes down to "no". Some will do funny little dances, some probably even just praying to a sun or rain god because they just lost it at that comment. I know I would.
To answer: no GA4 is not just the normal thing. There is no normal. It's the dominant thing and it invades privacy like hell and the whole thing needs to be thought about in a different way. I'd advice almost everyone to stop smoking that Google crack pipe and roll your own or find an analytics friendly vendor.
Yea I got a bit rhetorical there, apologies for being a bit fed up with this situation.
No, I refuse being told what to do.
Everything in life is optional.
> Look in a room full of tech people and you'll see all security experts and security adjacent people screaming HELL NO or simply giving a nuanced answer that ultimately comes down to "no". Some will do funny little dances, some probably even just praying to a sun or rain god because they just lost it at that comment. I know I would.
But if that's the case, are we saying that when the website was being created, it was being created with no-one who was security expert or let alone security adjacent people?
This is what I had refused to believe because in my opinion, more due diligence within the structure should've taken place and if there was no-one competent within the team, then why not hire one who is?
I can't help but feel frustrated, this is probably gonna negatively impact people who have talked on such suicide prevention websites.
Literally these websites is to create a safe space and for a person to be heard, if one introduces the concept of tracking or even feeling tracked, I can't help but feel frustrated as to why, why not hire people who know about security especially for such websites and especially with these laws. I am unable to understand this to be more specific.
Ask 100 random developers to setup a website, and to make sure the website owner should be able to see how many people visit the website, and probably 90 of those developers will default to setting up Google Analytics, just by "instinct".
People generally just continue with whatever they've learned, not revisiting the default choices they make, and it's been ingrained over decades that "Google Analytics is the best way to optimize your sales funnel" or whatever the marketers drink nowadays, so it'll take some time for these folks to revisit their decisions.
Perhaps you are right but what the duck does sales funnel mean in a suicide prevention website?
I mean, perhaps Google analytics might make sense anywhere else except this but perhaps you are right that there might be many dev's who don't know anything except G.A.
But I personally used to (still do) have the habit of searching open source alternatives to software themselves.
https://alternativeto.net/software/google-analytics/?license...
https://openalternative.co/alternatives/google-analytics
There are many alternatives present which value gdpr and can be self hosted easily.
I am unsure of what should be done if its case of ignorance rather than malice, malice can be fixed but ignorance is a greater systemetic issues and there are websites which help in fixing the gap of knowledge (like the ones I linked, esp alternativeto has genuinely helped me personally in many things) but the issue is that people might not even know or perhaps even bother with these websites too.
So is there any solution to such issues except awkward silences?
It seems that it is only temporary.
> “We realize that visitors must be able to trust that their privacy is protected and regret that concerns have arisen regarding this.”
They also regret that "concerns have arisen". No other regrets have been mentioned.
It is also good for mindless entertainment in between the real things that sometimes happen. And listening to music.
Could you give some specific examples?
I know there are some services that send GDPR data removal requests on your behalf. I wonder if there are any similar services that send messages like "Why the hell do you need these cookies?" to website operators.
I hardly ever see these cookie banners as my browser blocks most of them, but I still think it would be great to rub the idea of "Your website doesn't need any non-technical cookies" in website operators' faces.
functionmouse•42m ago