Websites selling abortion pills are sharing sensitive data with Google

Hell, now some websites even default to "non-required" tracking off, and literally do not require you to do anything to limit the data they harvest from you. And I'm pretty sure this is some third party's drop in solution.

GDPR doesn't specify UX.

"it's much easier to not use Google Analytics than it is to convince your government to clamp down on law enforcement search powers."

You literally wrote a one sentence comment that compares a decision for website owners to choose between not using GA and convincing their government not to clamp down on law enforcement search powers. I didn't put a single word in your mouth in stating what I did.

You wanting to walk back what you wrote doesn't make my comment put words in your mouth, they were the words you said.

> And it's much easier for website operators to stop using Google Analytics than it is for them to educate their customers on using VPNs and mailing their packages to dead drops (let alone for their customers to actually do those things).

GA is completely orthogonal to the entire discussion. That's the point that ProPublica (intentionally?) ignores, and apparently you're just unaware of.

It's doing literally nothing to protect or harm these people, because the government is not stooping to deanonymizing GA data when there are 1001 more direct and better established methods to achieve the same thing, it's a frankly absurd point.

Saying by not using GA they're even tangentially protecting customers shows a complete lack of understanding of why this government overreach is such a problem.

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tl;dr/too technical;didn't understand: The government doesn't need your GA fingerprint they can get the things that the fingerprint is made and then some straight from Google... and your ISP... and the site's host... and the mail services.. and the list goes on.

They can literally ask for all people who searched for a given term in a 5 block radius and you're trying to talk about hashed fingerprints???

It's like worrying that the government is going to check for your DNA in the toilet at a local restaurant when the establishment can be compelled to give them a receipt with your card details, your bank will give them the transaction details, your search history with the restaurant name is up for grabs, the municipal security cameras that watched you drive up are up for grabs...

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Once you understand that then the pointlessness of this line of reasoning comes up, and why ProPublica is doing this becomes more questionable.

By inventing some totally ludacris wrong, they're painting themselves as having uncovered some unique in-depth aspect to the dynamic between these abortion pill sites and their users, but to do so they're painting the sites as negligent with the most inane stretch of logic possible.

Instead of focusing more on the actual problem, the overreach, they create a new boogeyman because it gives their reporting a unique angle. But of course that boogeyman is serving the interests of people who are having their rights stomped on.

By completely misunderstanding the topic (and in ProPublica's case I'm not buying it was unintentional) both you and the article are just throwing FUD into the actual conversation that matters.

It's annoying to see supposedly creditable publications intentionally muddy things for their own benefit, and it's even more annoying to see people with a poor grasp of the situation just run with it blindly without taking 5 seconds to apply critical thinking and context to it all.