Be fair to potential customers (Privacy / Google Analytics on the FP website)

[humorkritik]

I didn’t read this thread when it came up,but I take it from Stefan’s post that @PepiMK actually triggered fairphone to change the tracking behaviour of their website.

I am with @Shiny here (thank you for your very thoughtful and positive post!): fairphone is a learning company, and it learns from people who criticise them. I wonder if @PepiMK could comment on the changes Fairphone did, and tell us if he had any further contact besides Joe’s reply here on the forum? =)

[anon90052001]

Yes, we made changes to how we use Google Analytics in terms of privacy based on feedback from community members, including @PepiMK.

[EDIT BELOW]

Here’s what the developer fixed in terms of privacy/security on our website:

• Google provides an option to remove the last 3 numbers of an IP address (anonymization of IP). Normally Google would store the the full IP (which is a unique internet connection) and now Google stores an IP address with the last 3 numbers removed which effectively reduces the ability to trace back info to one internet connection.

• Developer turned off sharing Google analytics data with other Google services in the Google Dashboard. So now Google doesn’t use analytics data from fairphone.com to improve their other services.

• For all social statistics across the site, we make a quick connection to Facebook, Mailchimp, Twitter. In the past, this call was made from the user’s connection (and thus Facebook could potentially link this with a current logged in Facebook account), and now the information is called from Fairphone’s server, so it’s not potentially linked anymore.

[Vinni]

@anon90052001

Yes, we made changes to how we use Google Analytics in terms of privacy based on feedback from community members, including @PepiMK

So now that fairphone changed its website, should I allow Google Analytics so FP can benefit from it or should I block it so Google doesn’t benefit from it?

[PepiMK]

Thanks for looking into improving your tracking!

It’s great to see that you now use the anonymization feature of Google Analytics and have disabled sharing! I still would have loved to see thew keep the data in house, but this is the best way possible for Google Analytics probably

Also my thanks for indeed using Shariff to stop social media from directly tracking visitors of your page. Perfect!

It seems FairPhone is now using a commercial social media service (TwineSocial) that’s still directly receiving PII (in the form of IPs) on at least one page (can’t find it again now), and there’s the use of DISQUS on blog posts, which is not mentioned in the privacy policy yet, but this is the way to go, thanks for treating us fair

[anon22355583]

Hi PepiMK,

Aside from Google Analytics we’re also taking a more hands-on approach to learning more about our users.
Would be great if you could participate in these conversations and help us improve your experience on the website

@anon22355583

Hi Guys!

It’s Akshay the UX Designer @ Fairphone! We’d like to make some parts of the website more easily accessible so we’re redesigning the mobile navigation. You can try out the new one here:

Try New Mobile Nav(It’s a prototype so you’re limited to only a few pages & interactions)

What I’d like to find out from you guys is:

What are the three main things you use the website for?

Would this navigation make things harder for you?

All Feedback is welcome!Thanks!-Akshay

[AnotherElk]

I want to very strongly second the use of Piwik suggested by @PepiMK.

I’m blocking Google Analytics where ever I can, and I won 't unblock it.
I very rarely look at what is blocked nowadays and only recently noticed it is used here.

[m4lvin]

I would also like to get a new answer from Fairphone whether/why Google Analytics is really needed or if there are plans to use Piwik instead.

I just went to fairphone.com and turned uBlock off. The list of domains to which the website connects contains many tracking and advertisement (!) servers. It also is quite long and the site takes longer to load.

Does the Privacy Policy really cover all of these?

And, given recent attention to this topic, some of the trackers make regular requests no matter what I do on the website. Does hotjar.com provide this “session replay” service or similar data? Is it also active in the shop (and thus might send addresses, credit card numbers etc. to third parties)?

In particular, this is listing facebook, so I wonder whether the following claim by @anon90052001 is no longer true?

@anon90052001

For all social statistics across the site, we make a quick connection to Facebook, Mailchimp, Twitter. In the past, this call was made from the user’s connection (and thus Facebook could potentially link this with a current logged in Facebook account), and now the information is called from Fairphone’s server, so it’s not potentially linked anymore.

Oh, and May next year is a good occasion to switch to self-hosted tracking software.