RE: Change proposal: new general principle for permitted uses

Rigo,

You do not need to single out (use a UID) to count objects or detect unique
visitors. These things can be done in other ways as I have shown. UIDs do
not help with the recognition of bots either.

There may be other things that need UIDs but we have not been told what they
are. We should have the reason for them, and therefore why there needs to be
a permitted use, clearly explained.

Mike





-----Original Message-----
From: Rigo Wenning [mailto:rigo@w3.org] 
Sent: 23 July 2013 13:47
To: public-tracking@w3.org
Cc: Mike O'Neill; rob@blaeu.com
Subject: Re: Change proposal: new general principle for permitted uses

Mike, 

On Tuesday 23 July 2013 08:10:46 Mike O'Neill wrote:
> If user profiles are not used or built then why the necessity for 
> singling-out? Why have we not been given a definitive reason for 
> collecting/using UIDs?

As far as I have understood, one needs to know the single user/device to be
able to count on objects. If one doesn't know whether it is the same user or
device, counting doesn't really work as it may e.g. be a bot. 

The second reason is that the audience measurers could make all of this up
and just assert the result. So instead of having a burdensome inquiry with
measures and beacons and things, one would just make things up. If the
client has suspicions, they would say: No, we deleted all for privacy. 

Given that outreach determines ad-pricing, there needs to be a safeguard
against manipulation. This safeguard is done with reproducible data sets so
that one can prove the correctness of the results to the client. 

I think, on the long run, we can do better than we do now and without UIDs,
but I personally believe this would overstretch the industry if written
positivistically into a specification. The bar for implementing the TCS
would become too high. But this is surely something we could imagine for an
incremental improvement (version 1.1) for the Specification. 

 --Rigo

Received on Tuesday, 23 July 2013 13:27:02 UTC