I think this would bother me more if I thought that there were a
significant number of users who either do not use cookies at all, or who
had some kind of effective cookie manager. I suspect that the actual
number is very close to zero, in the .n range at best.*
I have a problem with libraries using social media at all, actually,
since it has turned out to be such a privacy disaster. When I go to what
I think of as a benign site (my local library, DPLA, EFF!) and see that
they've got a FB page that gathers "likes" it just chills me. I realize
that all of these organizations need to maintain a level of visibility,
and Facebook or Tumblr or whatever is a way to do that. However, there
is no use of social media that can be argued as being privacy-neutral.
It's a dilemma, I know. But I hate to see libraries and others seemingly
promoting its use.
As for web use, only Tor, and perhaps not even Tor, can give you
something close to anonymity (except, perhaps, with the NSA). But it
requires certain tech chops and an effort way beyond that of clearing
out your cookies now and again, something that most people do not do.
kc
*ps - I had a great cookie manager for a while, but it's no longer
around. Cookie control in browsers actually was easier a decade ago -
they've obviously been discouraged from including that software. If
anyone knows of a good cookie program or plugin, I'd like to hear about it.
On 8/13/14, 10:22 AM, Eric Hellman wrote:
It seems that Code4Lib hasn't discussed this., though the news is 2 weeks old. It seems that
there are libraries using social share tools from AddThis", a company that has been using
a technology called "Canvas Fingerprinting" to track users.
In other words, it looks like libraries are giving away the user-privacy store.
For example, AddThis is used by my public library's Polaris catalog (BCCLS).
I'd be interested to learn how widespread this is.
Here's the article from ProPublica.
http://www.propublica.org/article/meet-the-online-tracking-device-that-is-virtually-impossible-to-block
And a follow-on discussion from Princeton CITP
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/englehardt/the-hidden-perils-of-cookie-syncing/
The research article:
https://securehomes.esat.kuleuven.be/~gacar/persistent/the_web_never_forgets.pdf
Techdirt:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140721/14523127960/tons-sites-including-whitehousegov-experiment-with-tracking-technology-that-is-difficult-to-block.shtml
Eric
Eric Hellman
President, Gluejar.Inc.
Founder, Unglue.it https://unglue.it/
http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/
twitter: @gluejar
--
Karen Coyle
kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
m: +1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600
