[PLUG-TALK] Website tracking

John Jason Jordan johnxj at gmx.com
Tue Nov 17 18:52:41 UTC 2020


I use mostly Chromium and Firefox from the repos on Xubuntu 20.04.1,
and in each browser I have set the option not to allow websites to
track me. I must add that I don't completely understand what tracking
means or how it might be harmful to me; I set the option just because
it was there in the Preferences and it sounded like a good idea.

Today I was unable to log in to my web account at Kaiser Permanente
because attempting to log in brings up a page where I must agree to new
terms and conditions and a new privacy statement. Reading these I
discovered the following:

	The Website and the App do not honor a browser’s signal or
	header request not to track the user's activity.

I didn't know a website could even do that. I'm not sure I care, but at
least it is insulting. If I don't want to be tracked, that's my affair.
But then, I don't know what they track or if I should care.

What exactly is website tracking and why might it be harmful? 



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