The first time I saw a session replay of all the mouse movements and input of a user on their own fucking computer that some marketing website-spyware had recorded was the moment I decided the Internet was a mistake.
Not saying it’s a good thing but assume that most websites are recording your session at this point.
[edit] also, that just happened to be the first time I’d seen a single session represented that way, rather than aggregates. Again, it wasn’t some brand-new thing then, it’d been around long enough to have multiple companies offering it as a service, not just an internal tool at a couple giants.
I asked our data team what the fuck they need this level of tracking for, and they said "wasn't us, it was marketing that requested it".
So I ask many of the marketing people, and they just say "oh we thought it could be useful!" Without actually clarifying the "how" or "why".
I removed that shit with a quickness after that, and no one's complained so far (duh)
I love the GDPR if nothing else because it scares the - excuse the vulgarity and ableism - retarded decision makers into not doing idiotic shit like this. For any kind of bullshit like this I just bring up GDPR as a shield these days and none of it goes through
This stuff bugs me so much; it all feels so cargo-culty. Even ignoring privacy, I wonder how much money and computing power is burned on buying and collecting data that nobody needs and that doesn't actually serve any significant business purpose.