Re: Third-Party Web Tracking: Policy and Technology Paper outlining harms of tracking

On Oct 11, 2012, at 5:08 PM, Fred Andrews wrote:

> Showing harm to the user is very easy.  If you really need help then just look to all the claimed critical permitted uses - while the user private data is taken for these uses the value to a user of sharing this data is zero and thus causes a huge financial loss to users.

That is just nonsense.  The data collected for permitted uses
is to allow a service to protect itself against attacks
and allow non-targeted advertising to be paid for without
user accounts.  The benefit to the user is that they can remain
pseudonymous to the site while receiving free services, as
opposed to requiring a user account, email address, and
either fully-targeted content advertising or fees to supply
the service.  In other words, the permitted uses are needed
because the alternative is no privacy at all (or no service at all).

....Roy