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To the web devs out there

Postby FlugHund » Tue Feb 27, 2018 1:53 pm

Image

Why?


(Direct link, in case the pic does not load for you: http://beggabaur.rocks/daten/fg.org_tracks.png )
Last edited by FlugHund on Wed Feb 28, 2018 6:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: To Curt

Postby curt » Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:01 pm

That's a scary message, but it must be coming from your browser? I have a google analytics plugin installed on the web site. This gives me broad demographic information ... like 98% males, 2% females, 25% traffic from USA, 20% from Germany, etc. Other than that, this is a pretty vanilla word press site. I have to run out the door to work here in a minute (we are doing flight testing today) but later i would be happy to post a list of the plugins we have installed. Can your browser flag which bit of code from the web site is triggering the message? Maybe that would help understand what is going on. Feel free to keep blocking if you have any concerns.
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Re: To Curt

Postby bugman » Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:05 pm

That sounds like the standard SeaMonkey behaviour to the Google analytics script. Is that the browser you use? I think I remember seeing someone mention that about my own website once. The Google analytics script is pretty widely used and is very useful for website admins. Have you not seen this message before?

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Re: To Curt

Postby FlugHund » Tue Feb 27, 2018 5:05 pm

curt wrote in Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:01 pm:I have a google analytics plugin installed. This gives me broad demographic information ... like 98% males, 2% females, 25% traffic from USA, 20% from Germany, etc.

Ok, that pretty much answers my question.

Yes, that's SeaMonkey browser. I rarely visit the home page and if I do I usually immediately click on Legacy Site since it has all I need. So, this message might have been there for considerable time I just might have missed it. But today I realised it and wasn't able to think of a single reason why an open source flight simulator site would have the need to track people's online activities. But if that really helps to maintain and improve the site it's ok by me (even if it opens yet another source for google to track online activities - I am almost certain they put it to good use only).

Sorry, i have no clue how to determine what triggers that warning but I've clicked on some of the tools that SeaMonkey provides in order to find a way. Stumbled on this link then: https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=http%3 ... ear.org%2F
Which then rose the question, why would a web developer, in order to maintain a site, would even think of google-anal ytics while there are still other issues at hand to make the site compatible with an official standard?

Okok, I'll stop nagging now, I know that is unpleasant (no reference to any other thread intended). Just trying to satisfy my curiosity about that warning.

Greetings
(for anybody not knowing me closely, please read that with a twinkle in one's eye)-Alex
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Re: To Curt

Postby FlugHund » Tue Feb 27, 2018 5:49 pm

Ok, I've randomly clicked a bit more in SeaMonkey's tools and at some point it came up with a warning:
Code: Select all
The resource at “http://platform-api.sharethis.com/js/sharethis.js#product=ga&property=58d12c68369dcd0011893d08” was blocked because tracking protection is enabled.
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Re: To Curt

Postby wkitty42 » Tue Feb 27, 2018 5:57 pm

sharethis just gives you an easy way to share the site's URL with folks in many other social media services...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: To Curt

Postby curt » Wed Feb 28, 2018 3:03 am

FlugHund,

FlightGear.org is a wordpress site, so if there are html validator errors, then ugh ... time to file bug reports with the wordpress team I suppose (or a plugin developer if that's where they are coming from.)

The information I look at mostly from google analytics is the referrers ... to see who is talking about us if our visits go way up on some particular day. Also the live view is kind of neat ... shows blobs on a global map for all the countries people are visiting from. I suppose it is insidious, but I just meant to geek out on the data, nothing more. :-)

I suppose if these things are a concern, then seamonkey is doing the right thing for you ... blocking all that. Sadly, I have a google phone, use a google web browser, run google mail, use google to show me VF-211 markings, I drive with google maps ... if I'm not saying anything negative about google, I have nothing to worry about, right? :-)
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Re: To the web devs out there

Postby FlugHund » Thu Mar 01, 2018 12:03 pm

Right! As long as their Soul Sucker© is not yet operational. Which sucks away a tiny bit of one's soul each time one uses one of their services.

Kidding aside, I've changed the topic so it's not as personal and addresses a wider audience. I was quite disappointed when I saw that message popping up since untill then I've considered flightgear.org a friendly and trustworthy site. Unfortunately for several years now there is this trend, that webdevs are very lax with including third-party scripts. As if they don't really care 'bout their visitors. Or maybe they're just not aware of the risks and naively think certain companies provide such scripts for allegedly free without a hidden agenda. Even though the web is full of warnings about security risks, abuse of personal data and what not. In particular I like this presentation[1] pointing out the economical risks.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NyFRIgulPo

The friendly guys on our IRC network also pointed out, that this could become a legal issue in the near future in the EU. Namely on May 25th when a new EU regulation named General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)[2] becomes enforceable. It's arguable, of course, whether flightgear.org is "an organization that collects data from EU residents" or not. Though in the spirit of avoiding legal issues and court it's probably best to be more careful with such scripts.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_D ... Regulation

This probably is not the best location to have a talk about this topic but maybe there are one or two webdevs lurking. And with a tiny bit of luck they might consider twice before adding third-party scripts to their site in the future, if they haven't done that up to now.
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Re: To the web devs out there

Postby curt » Thu Mar 01, 2018 1:38 pm

I did a quick grep for "sharethis" and did get some matches from the google analytics script.
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Re: To the web devs out there

Postby FlugHund » Tue Mar 27, 2018 2:16 pm

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Re: To the web devs out there

Postby wkitty42 » Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:47 pm

this is old news... really old... the common folks are just now starting to wake up to it, though...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: To the web devs out there

Postby bugman » Tue Mar 27, 2018 7:51 pm

Many of those things are "opt-in" though - I checked them and they were blank (except for those I deliberately enabled). If you've backed up your Android device to Google Drive, you explicitly turned on that feature. And if you use Gmail, your emails will be on a Gmail server somewhere. And if you let Google track you, you will be tracked ;)

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