Cycling UK Forum

I can sometimes be that simple, yes. Other times the person's comments will have been quoted, along with their username.

Generally-speaking it's better to leave history alone, rather than trying to edit it. See the Streisand Effect.

axel_knutt wrote: ↑28 Jun 2021, 5:48pmThe Data Protection Act is a good enough reason, people now have a right to have their social media data deleted if they want.

No, I'm afraid the Data Protection Act doesn't give anyone that right.

The "right to be forgotten" is limited to deletion of personal data, not public comments made in Forums. And it only applies in extreme circumstances.

More information: https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/

And UK-specific: https://www.itpro.co.uk/general-data-pr ... -forgotten

Yes, most browsers will remember passwords for you. But they don't talk to each other.

My BitWarden passwords are available on my mobile phone (Android), my office PC (Linux), my Laptop (Windows 10) and every different browser I use. Change or add a password on any of them, and the other devices get updated too

For remembering passwords (I have a different random password for every website) I strongly recommend BitWarden.

https://bitwarden.com

Free, open-source, and works on many types of computer, mobile device, and web browser. Get it to remember your passwords, and even type them in for you. It synchronises your passwords automatically between browsers and devices, too.

Yes, unless there's a good reason to delete them.

Even if we did delete them, the posts would probably still be available in search engine and internet archives.

If you do regret posting something, beware of the Streisand Effect [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect]: it's usually better to keep quiet and let the offending material quietly become forgotten than to try to have it removed.

The simplest thing to do is just stop using your account.

I can also disable your account, so you can't use it any more, if that helps.

Aha, the search server went down this morning on server reboot, and didn't restart. Hold on...

restarted. Search is working again

No problem, it seriously annoys me too.

Try the Vivaldi browser, and the uBlock Origin browser plugin. They work wonders - I hardly ever see a cookie popup these days!

Cookies are a way for a website to remember who you are, and/or retain a specific state, such as sorting order preferences. They're needed because HTTP is a stateless protocol: every request is completely separate. Cookies are sent with each request, and can be used to look up a session key or similar so the website remembers your preferences, or login state, or whatever.

Cookies in themselves aren't bad, or dangerous, they're just short snippets of text stored by your web browser.

The use of cookies starts to intrude on people's privacy when big sites (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) set cookies on multiple websites, to remember you and your preferences as you move around the internet. This is how they target adverts at you, for things you have just searched for. It's not so much the cookie that's the problem, it's more the fact that they're gathering vast amounts of data on you with a cookie to identify who you are.

The GDPR was intended to make it illegal to use cookies for tracking people without first asking permission. A noble aim, but implemented completely the wrong way around. It's much better to be asked once per browser, rather than once per website. Your browser has complete control over which cookies it sends to websites, and which cookies it won't send. Websites may or may not be trustworthy: they could say they aren't tracking you, but track you anyway.

Anyway, we are where we are. The GDPR might well mean we're legally required to ask everyone who visits the Forum whether they're OK with Google Analytics or not. Hence the annoying popups you've come to love might be coming here soon. From a technical point of view it's annoying and mostly pointless, but it's a legal requirement. Blame the politicians and law-makers, not the website developers.

...

To answer merseymouth, the reason this tracking is a problem is because Google and Facebook and the like have discovered the eye-wateringly immense value in gathering data about people. It's all about selling targetted advertising, still very Big Business. In 2020, Google made $146,920,000,000 in advertising revenue. That's why Google is Big.

In the case of Facebook, the targetted advertising can be used to influence national election results (see: Cambridge Analytica) which is another massively lucrative exercise. Facebook knows your family and friends, and can work out your political views. They'll then send you political adverts which you will probably like, subtly influencing your ideas on how to vote. We naturally like organisations that fit our opinions.

Psamathe wrote: ↑8 Jun 2021, 12:51pm (My bold and colour)
In which case removing Google Analytics would not have much of an impact if so many browsers are blocking collection of the data you say the site owners so desperately need - they are not getting that data anyway 'cos of browser blocks.

Indeed. Google Analytics is perhaps becoming slowly less and less useful. At some point Google Analytics will need to switch to using some other indicator of who is visiting what. They will, because selling targetted advertising is their core business and main revenue stream. Cookies might disappear, but advertiser tracking isn't going away any time soon. Too much money in it.

There have been some signs of "first-party" cookie tracking using a proxy server, so the Google Analytics server looks like it's on the same domain as the website. For example, it would be possible for this Cycling UK to have analytics.cyclinguk.org as an alias for the Google Analytics server, thus potentially allowing tracking even though "google-analytics.com" trackers are blocked. Apparently some sites already do this, using CNAMES, but it would be possible using an HTTP proxy too, even more tricky to spot.

Yes, most modern browsers block tracking by default. Which is why Google is researching alternative methods to drive their targetted advertising business.

Except Google Chrome, which allows Google to know quite a lot about you. Which is why I prefer Vivaldi.

chris_suffolk wrote: ↑8 Jun 2021, 12:24pmOr you could just keep the essential cookies, and ditch the rest - such as Analytics, then we would never have got here in the first place.

Unfortunately I'm not the decision-maker on this issue.

chris_suffolk wrote: ↑8 Jun 2021, 12:18pmI'm not expecting much, but since the site isn't going to stop Google Analytic use, then the ICO is the only route left open. Well sort of not using the site, which is also a possibility.

You can stop Google Analytics, on all websites on the whole internet. Much more effective than reporting websites to ICO one by one and waiting for a response.

You can use a modern privacy-aware browser like Vivaldi (based on Chrome, but with Google tracking turned off by default) or install something like uBlock Origin as a plugin. I use both, and Google Analytics never sees me, wherever I go.

chris_suffolk wrote: ↑8 Jun 2021, 12:08pm Complaint submitted to the ICO, as you suggested that I do in the post above. See if anything comes of it.

Thanks! Trying to get clear information out of them is near impossible, but that might help.

But then there are probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of websites that are illegally lacking cookie opt-in popups. They're probably quite busy!

Psamathe wrote: ↑8 Jun 2021, 11:39amBut then you are tracking people who visit your site so it is quite right that you ask your site visitor for permission. If you want to track them it is perfectly reasonable to ask them first.

What is "tracking"?

I take it to mean "We can see what this visitor looked at, where they came from, and where they went. We can serve them targetted adverts because we know their preferences. If they're on Facebook, we also know the network of their family and friends, their political views, and more."

I don't think "We counted another visit to that web page" as necessarily being "tracking". But it is, in a way.

Psmamathe wrote:That said I do disagree with aspects of the GDPR rules e.g. I don't regard IP address as "personal data" as we have no way to tie that (normally temporary) identifier to an individual.

I would say that IP addresses are highly personal data: it is often relatively easy to tie IP addresses to people, to track them or find out their personal information. The law-makers tend to agree, but it's a grey area again.