– In any other context there would be outrage that data like these are being collected over an insecure connection. – You give less information to get an insurance quote. Passing a username may contravene rules (depending upon how it’s done). – GA prohibits collection of personally identifiable information (PII). It’s only when combined with a ‘mundane’ unique identifier (username) that it crosses the creepy line. – Logging the ‘scary’ stuff is pretty mundane in itself – that is, when collected anonymously and in aggregate. In BuzzFeed’s defense, I’m sure when they set up the tracking in the first place they didn’t foresee that they’d be recording data from quizzes of this personal depth. This is just a single example, but I suspect this particular quiz would have had less than 2 million views if everyone completing it realised every click was being recorded & could potentially be reported on later – whether that data is fully identifiable back to individual users, or pseudonymous, or even totally anonymous.Ī few thoughts, without a cohesive narrative…
![how to tell if your gay test buzzfeed how to tell if your gay test buzzfeed](https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2022-01/23/20/asset/c3fdc72be0f3/sub-buzz-9851-1642970570-6.jpg)
In other words, if they wish, they could say “show me all the data for quiz 1218987” knowing that’s the ‘Check Your Privelege’ quiz.
![how to tell if your gay test buzzfeed how to tell if your gay test buzzfeed](https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2022-04/25/14/asset/b44083dad684/sub-buzz-4723-1650896641-1.jpg)
that they’re able to link the data they’re recording in Google Analytics about my activity on the site back to my email address and other personally identifiable information). If I log in using 2 different browsers right now, it assigns me that same username string, but I’m going to caveat that I’m not 100% sure they’re recording that it is ‘me’ browsing the site (ie. I think that’s recording my user status, and an encoded version of my username.
![how to tell if your gay test buzzfeed how to tell if your gay test buzzfeed](https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2022-04/4/14/campaign_images/e6962d6ecf69/kristen-stewart-gay-panicking-over-cate-blanchett-2-6565-1649081825-0_dblbig.jpg)
Within this you can also see it records ‘username’. …and about 25 other pieces of information.How many times have you shared their content directly to Facebook & Twitter & via Email?.Have you connected Facebook with BuzzFeed?.There you can see other info they’re tracking, including: A scope of ‘1’ means it’s something recorded about the user, ‘2’ means it’s recorded about the current visit, ‘page’ means it’s just a piece of information about the page itself. The first line there is how many times in total I’ve visited the site (above this, which I’ve skipped for brevity, it also records the time I first visited, and a timestamp of my current visit).īelow that, the ‘Custom Var’ block is made up of elements BuzzFeed have actively decided “we need to record this in addition to what Google Analytics gives us out of the box”. Here’s a description of what’s going on there: They actually record much more than this, but this is just the info they pass to Google (stored within Google Analytics): Here’s a snapshot of what BuzzFeed records when you land on a page. I’ll start with the fairly mundane stuff, and then move on to one example of some slightly more scary stuff.
![how to tell if your gay test buzzfeed how to tell if your gay test buzzfeed](https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-11/6/10/campaign_images/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-03/the-19-best-foods-to-steal-from-your-roommate-2-24194-1509982722-5.jpg)
When you visit BuzzFeed, they record lots of information about you.