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Comment by technel | Hacker News Reader

Given that this is a community of entrepreneurs, I'm surprised how unsympathetic a lot of people here are to this technique. Operating a business online, analytics are a very important part of understanding how your users interact with with your service and improving the quality of your correspondence. Facebook is just trying to identify which emails people respond to (i.e. open) most.

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Probably because most entrepreneurs have morals/ethics. Just because you can do something, or just because you want something, doesn't mean you should. And doubly so when you know that the victim would most likely not agree to being tracked.

Just because the information is useful, that doesn't mean it is ethical to collect it.

Would those of you who object to this tactic also object to collecting website analytics (which in my experience many normal users, including members of my own family, do not understand either.) If not, why not?

This isn't a rhetorical question; I'm sincerely curious. Thanks.

For email, it's the same reason I object to ordinary mail containing tracking devices beyond those needed to deliver the mail.

For websites, it's the same risk I take when leaving my house to visit any public place.

Personally, I think analytics is fine as long as you run them from the same domains as the website. Using e.g. Google Analytics allows them to track users across multiple sites, which is much more dangerous, in my opinion, and should be avoided.

I use Piwik on my own sites and will never share that data with anyone.

How many of their users do you think know they're being tracked like that? I mean actually know and understand, not "were notified in the fine print on page 27".

Tracking users in ways they don't actually know about and understand, well, the usual terms normal people apply to that sort of behavior are "underhanded", "antisocial", "betraying trust", etc.

The vast majority of users don't understand any tracking technology, period.

Wow, I hope that subscribing to this mindset is not the status quo among entrepreneurs. Another "very important" thing for most online businesses is money. Doesn't mean that we should accept it when they get it through underhanded means.

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