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Address diversity of privacy definitions and add missing threats #41
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Address diversity of privacy definitions and add missing threats #41
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I think this model is about the user using laws and regulation to control their online presence, while the other is about using technical means. The privacy threat model has, so far, been entirely about technical means. It's worth exploring those two approaches, although I'm not sure what we can say about the legal landscape in a W3C document that needs to include countries that haven't passed any useful laws about this.
I believe there's disagreement in the "regulation will help" camp between people who think "notice and consent" is enough, vs people who think it tends to just produce cookie banners. Are you the right person to explore that, or do we need to find more contributors?
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The privacy threat model has actually been different in different proposals so far. Its my hope we can update this document to reflect that reality. Its been very confusing! You'll find for example differences in what Google and Apple representatives consider tracking methodology that are most evident in a few of the floc tickets, but it is not at all clear when talking about the proposals since the word 'privacy' is used instead of a definition on what that means in each case.
I 100% would like each group to pen their own definitions and be very clear about it. I hope to address guidelines for doing this in Feathered Serpent which will demo in web adv next week, but the definitions should be written by their supporters, and the issues by those who disagree, this way every voice is heard.
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Different people do have different assumptions about what "privacy" means about about what "tracking" means (e.g. https://twitter.com/jyasskin/status/1387170000511799299). This comment was an attempt to refine the description of this model so it conveys its point to more people. If you're in the "notice and consent" camp, could you write that down, with a TODO or something to get a contribution from the other folks?
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These 4 and the Browser Snooping threat below are a useful new category of threats to privacy, where users might worry about their browser learning too much about them. I think we should keep them separate from the other 3 items that cover the websites the user visits. Basically, group cases by the entity that's attacking the user.
I think the W3C hasn't historically worked much on the problem of a user choosing a browser whose behavior they didn't entirely want, and it's not clear to me that the W3C has any levers to use to change this sort of UA behavior, but it's worth discussing with the PING anyway.
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Ah, actually they aren't a new category, in fact current uses of these methods feed into the exact same user tracking ad technologies as the others. I'm amazed they have not been brought up before!
To exclude them or move them to a separate category would raise the question of why browser-based or browser-partnered adtech firms get special treatment, and would make proposals benefit one group over the other.
Since the same data about users is extracted for the same use cases, and also I checked this is user agent behavior so should by the charter be in scope for us, we should probably leave them in the same list. Do you disagree?
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Or do you mean its worth flagging that only browsers can do these things? Thats a good point! I can tag them as such! Let me know if this update is in line with what you are thinking.
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These two cases belong in a different category from the first two: the first two talk about the way a profile is built, while these two talk about how little control a user has over the profile.
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Thats a good point, but its not always true that these methods are not tracking methods. Some profiles MUST be collected, i.e. in ecommerce. A user is consenting to buy something, and technically for their information to be collected. They may not want the latter but cannot separate them. Hiding the profile tricks the user into thinking they have not been tracked, and this behavior allows the profile to be collected. This is just as unfair to the user. My intention here was to prevent these threats from being forgotten.
We could put them in a separate list, but I think this method is important and I would prefer it here. What do you think?
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I was thinking of subsections under "Profiling". When I say they're a different category, I don't mean to make claims about whether or not they're tracking (and, in fact it'd be good to avoid the term "tracking" entirely, or define it).