Off-topic:Wuzzy wrote:1) Remove all tracker scripts
Moonchild wrote:1) Not possible, because your definition of 'tracker" is "anything that's external" -- that's not how portals work.
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This is a straw man argument. Where did you get the idea that I think a tracker is anything which is external?
I do
not think a tracker is anything which is external, this is a silly and useless definition.
A tracker is a script or some other method for which its primary or even only task is to collect lots and lots of data about the user, such as operating system, browser, screen resolution, and much more data which you could get your hands on with the help of JavaScript (for example). This has the “side-effect” of breaking user privacy. Tracker scripts often have
zero use for the users who execute them, they are mostly only for the benefit of the website operator and related 3rd parties.
I argue that it is unlikely that users would
voluntarily agree to something like this, but they don't have to: This all happens automatically, without the user's knowledge and without their explicit permission.
Whether the tracker is hosted on the own server or somewhere else is irrelevant.
While I think it is not very efficient to load JavaScripts from sources other than the main site (because: Why not just hosting them on the main site in the first place?), I have no moral obligation with external scripts as long they are actually useful for the user and
not used for tracking.
And Google Analytics is the PERFECT example of a tracker script. Also, Google Analytics is a proprietary software which is run
automatically as soon as a new Pale Moon user opens up the browser.
But it's not just Google Analytics. Start.me uses tracker JavaScripts from other sources as well and I already demonstrated that they are not trustworthy as well. I specifically only listed domains known for tracking, not just any random external domain.
Wuzzy wrote:
2) Remove ad
Moonchild wrote:
2) Pay start.me for a premium account.
Won't happen because I am not using start.me anyway. Also as I said, I am not THAT concerned about the ad anyway. Also, I bet paying for a premium account won't remove any of the tracker scripts, which are my much bigger concern here.
You have to understand that this is a partnership with start.me - we have a contract in which Pale Moon users get the benefits of having this fully-customizable portal (even anonymously, without having an account, which they implemented initially for us) which many have asked for prior. On the flip-side, start.me gets more traffic from us. All this helps to make it viable to run and in turn support both us and them financially.
OK, so I guess this means start.me is unlikely to change. Well, but even then I think it is wrong to force all those tracker scripts upon the (first-time-)users.
Moonchild wrote:Some numbers from June (made possible by having a "tracker" script -- are you paying attention, Wuzzy?)
This would exclude visits of people with aggressive blocking of benign analytics scripts/net requests:
(…)
Source: Analytics
What are “benign analytics scripts”? Is such a thing even possible? I guess that “Analytics” is short for “Google Analytics”. How can you claim that Google Analytics is “benign”? Have you looked at the source code and can you proof to me that absolutely nothing fishy is going on with Google Analytics? I doubt it, since Google Analytics is proprietary software. So there is absolutely no reason to think that Google Analytics is trustworthy. For a rational user, there is no reason to voluntarily execute Google Analytics, yet this is done by default.
Long story short: Keep the start page if you must, but please,
please try to do so without affecting user's privacy.
), so I am a bit confused here.