Why does Fairphone help Google to track innocent users on Fairphone Website

A lot of Google related scripts and Cookies are embedded in the Fairphone Website

Actually we have:
Doubleclick.net
google.com
googletagmanager.com
noembed.com
youtube.com

So why is Fairphone giving the customers no choice to block the cookies and helping Google to collect more data? There is not even an banner that this Website is collection Cookies. This goes not in harmony with the Dataprotection Law of the EU.

There are a lot of alternatives if you want to measure website statistics, so can you tell me why you are doing it this way?

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This is a user-community forum.
Fairphone employees come to this forum only ever once in a while.
Therefore you will get no official information/answe here.
You should rather contact support to that regard.

But first of all you might want to read this thread:

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Unfortunately Fairphone does think they need to collect user data to keep their services functioning well.

Here are some official answers about Google Spyware (the first one being from 2015):

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Not much different from the status quo. Gotta pick your battles. If this is yours, install uBlock + uMatrix and block these.

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What I donā€™t get about companies and Google Analytics ā€¦ ā€œWe use it to do this and thatā€, ā€œit helps us to do this and thatā€. Well yeah, you want to do this and that, I get that ā€¦ but why not with a well-established Open Source alternative thatā€™s not exactly new, unkown and untested in the field?

What about Matomo (formerly Piwik)?
(This has been brought up before.)

Is the cost for hosting it instead of using Googleā€™s infrastructure too high?
Is it a similar problem as with MS Office, where the people you hire mostly just donā€™t know or canā€™t handle Open Source alternatives and the needed training would cost you time, nerves and money?

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I think any company would profit from instead of spying on their customers to guess what they want just asking them.

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What we donā€™t know - and most likely never will be told - is another factor.
Using google-tools might influence the ranking on google-search and - no matter what - that search engine still is the most used one.

Itā€™s not really important, if that is true, it just might be enough, that people think so when deciding what tools they use.

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Thatā€™s true of course. Selling your soul to the devil might give you an unfair advantage to your competition. Well, then letā€™s do it! :woman_facepalming:

Oh, that would be cool, in a sense, so the EU could milk some antitrust money out of Google :slight_smile: .

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If you ever get google to reveal the system they create the search results by, ā€¦
Then you maybe could make it an antitrust matter. They most likely will not write it down.

First of all, I did not justify anything. It is just a possible explanation.
And on the other hand it is not too strange, that a company selling a phone with a google OS is using google tools on the homepage.
Finally, if my guessing would be correct, the same applies, that has already been posted in many other threads. Fairphone can only take on so many tasks at one time.
Right now, they want to achieve more sales to gain more influence in the industry.
Therefore they need high rankings in search engines, they need presence on social-media channels like facebook and twitter and they need a phone, that is ā€œgoodā€ for lots of people.

Once they are known like bigger brands and people are really searching for the name Fairphone, then they might be in a position to tackle things that right now could possibly reduce their visibility in the market.
All this of course is fictuous, as I donā€™t really know, if using google-tools influences ranking.

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There are no indications whatsoever that using Google Analytics is improving your search ranking per se. The insights you gain from using it could of course help to improve your ranking. I think Fairphone really believes it can improve the quality of the website with Google Analytics.

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I agree and now there is also an official importer plug in from google analytic.

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Hi JH. I recommend NoScript.

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On desktop, I prefer uMatrix. Much more clear what is being blocked. On mobile, I donā€™t block JavaScript. Too messyā€¦

On mobile, you can use Firefox Klar/Focus with JS disabled as a proxy web browser, and then Ā«shareĀ» a webpage to your main web browser whenever you need to login or the website doesnā€™t work.

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These kinds of data scavenging activities by fairphone B.V. are a let-down to me. As a customer I want the manufacturer of my smart phone to be ā€œgoodā€. Using trackers on customers is bad practice when it comes to respect of privacy. I had expected better from a company that puts ā€˜fairnessā€™ as a priority.

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Ok, I am no friend of that google-stuff as well.
But on the other hand, I guess, we should be fair to companies as well.
If you want to work/do business on the internet successfully, you most likely need cookies, tracking and analyzing quite a lot of user information.
You will need that stuff to shape your website in a way, that they meet your customers needs. Languages, design of the whole page as well as single pages, optimization for search engines, for disabilities etc. etc.
If people searching for information leave the page after just a moment without ever returning, because they do not find what they are looking immediately, you might need to redesign your page. If you never get visitors from some countries, that you are aiming at as a market, you might need to do more PR in those countries or maybe offer some other language version ā€¦

I donā€™t know, if there is any other way to get that kind of information as cheap and easy and as valid as well (it is a kind of complete count instead of a mere sample or experimental testing.

So, if we want webpages, that do as we like, that offer their information in an instant and that are fun to visit, we might have to provide some information.
The core point to me is, if those data collected is sold to other companies. I honestly do not know, if that is the case with the analytics used on the FP homepage. That would be something to hold against them, not just the mere collection of data for their own business.
Well, thatā€™s my very own opinion of course.

I donā€™t know how Firefox Klar or Focus handle Add-ons, but in e.g. Fennec F-Droid popular blocking Add-ons like uBlock Origin, NoScript or Privacy Badger can be installed.
uMatrix, too ā€¦

Have you tried on mobile? (I donā€™t use it yet, but Iā€™m curious.)

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Honestly, I donā€™t remember. I have tried NoScript on mobile and found the UI to be useless, but I donā€™t remember when. I donā€™t even remember on which mobile it was (Iā€™ve been using Fennec since early alpha versions).

(Iā€™m currently using Firefox Preview so it does not apply.)

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Alternative and Privacy-aware Search Engines