- Content source
- http://barker.co.uk/buzzfeediswatching
When you visit BuzzFeed, they record lots of information about you.
Most websites record some information. BuzzFeed record a whole ton. I’ll start with the fairly mundane stuff, and then move on to one example of some slightly more scary stuff.
First: The Mundane Bits
Here’s a snapshot of what BuzzFeed records when you land on a page. They actually record much more than this, but this is just the info they pass to Google (stored within Google Analytics):
Here’s a description of what’s going on there:
The first line there is how many times in total I’ve visited the site (above this, which I’ve skipped for brevity, it also records the time I first visited, and a timestamp of my current visit).
Below that, the ‘Custom Var’ block is made up of elements BuzzFeed have actively decided “we need to record this in addition to what Google Analytics gives us out of the box”. Against these, you can see ‘scope’. A scope of ’1′ means it’s something recorded about the user, ’2′ means it’s recorded about the current visit, ‘page’ means it’s just a piece of information about the page itself.
There you can see other info they’re tracking, including:
- Have you connected Facebook with BuzzFeed?
- Do you have email updates enabled?
- Do they know your gender & age?
- How many times have you shared their content directly to Facebook & Twitter & via Email?
- Are you logged in?
- Which country are you in?
- Are you a buzzfeed editor?
- …and about 25 other pieces of information.
The Scary Bit
The scary bit occurs when you think about certain types of BuzzFeed content; most specifically: quizzes. Most quizzes are extremely benign – the stereotypical “Which [currently popular fictional TV show] Character Are You?” for example. But some of their quizzes are very specific, and very personal.
Read more @ http://barker.co.uk/buzzfeediswatching
