Privacy

Google’s Ban on Third-party Cookies Could Actually Harm User Privacy

January 28, 2020January 28, 2020

Reading Time: 3 minutes

There was quite a lot of coverage earlier this month when Google announced that they would be phasing out support for third-party cookies in Chrome within the next two years. The stock price of firms like Criteo, which rely heavily on third-party cookie data for their core business, dipped sharply. The general consensus has been that this was a welcome move in terms of user privacy – but nixing third-party cookies could actually harm user privacy, by making it harder to identify irresponsible sharing of user data.

GDPR: Breaking the Third-party Data Habit

December 6, 2018December 6, 2018

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Ah, GDPR. Like the guy (or girl) you matched with on Tinder six months ago who got less interesting the more you got to know them, it just won’t go away. It keeps sliding into your DMs with teasing headlines like, “Data Protection Authority of Baden-Württemberg Issues First German Fine Under the GDPR” or “Washington Post offers invalid cookie consent under EU rules“. And there you were thinking you were done with it back in May, when you sent all your users that “Please respond to this email to stay on our mailing list” email and threw that giant banner about cookies up on your website.

The seven people you need on your data team

October 13, 2019June 23, 2015

Reading Time: 8 minutes

Congratulations! You just got the call – you’ve been asked to start a data team to extract valuable customer insights from your product usage, improve your company’s marketing effectiveness, or make your boss look all “data-savvy” (hopefully not just the last one of these). And even better, you’ve been given carte blanche to go hire … Read more

I love it when a mail-merge comes together…

December 14, 2009

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Would you buy BI services from a company that can’t successfully execute a mail-merge? Not to mention ones that send unsolicited e-mails to drum up business…

Internet Explorer 8 RC1: Porn mode gets a face-lift

January 30, 2009

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Now if that headline doesn’t get me some search ranking juice, nothing will – though my contextual ads (left) are likely to be less impressed. I was going to post this earlier in the week, but Eric Peterson’s swashbuckling defense of cookies (and my hand-wringing response) intervened. As it turns out, though, that debate is … Read more

Eric Peterson Rides Again

January 28, 2009

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Eric Peterson has an impassioned post on his blog in which he defends the Obama Administration’s decision to use persistent cookies for tracking behavior on the Whitehouse.gov site. He directs particular ire at an article by Chris Soghoian at CNET from November which questioned whether it was a smart move for the (then) Obama Transition … Read more

‘Anonymous’ Netflix Prize data not so anonymous after all

October 1, 2008

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Does entropic de-anonymization of sparse microdata set your pulse racing? If so, you’re gonna love this paper [PDF] by Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov of the University of Texas at Austin. Even if your stats math is as rusty as mine, however, the paper makes fascinating reading – and is surprisingly readable, if you skip … Read more

Phorm gets the all-clear from the UK Goverment (kinda)

September 16, 2008

Reading Time: 2 minutes

[Update 10/1/08: BT has announced that it will commence a new trial with Phorm to start September 30 in the UK. The trial, in accordance with the conditions below, is opt-in] Beleaguered behavioral targeting outfit Phorm appears finally to have caught a bit of a lucky break – the UK Government has (belatedly) responded … Read more

Yahoo updates IndexTools terms & conditions

September 11, 2008

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Yahoo is not letting the grass grow under its feet with its integration of IndexTools. Today IndexTools partners received an e-mail from Yahoo informing them of a change to the terms & conditions of the service, which need to be agreed to by October 15 in order to retain access to IndexTools. The e-mail calls … Read more

Internet Explorer 8 beta 2: Privacy vs Monetizability

September 2, 2008

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Once upon a time, when I was a young turk, I would assiduously download every last doodad that my employer created as soon as it shipped – or often long before, happily reaching for the pile of floppy disks as I rebuilt my computer for the umpteenth time following the latest toxic combination of untested … Read more