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DanielVarga comments on Isn't this sitemeter logging a bit too excessive? - Less Wrong
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Comments (19)
What is this supposed to prove? It took me one minute to identify myself, without checking my IP address.
It's not supposed to prove anything, it's just observing that identifying individuals using this information isn't a completely trivial task.
It is not always completely trivial to identify individual visitors? That is a very low standard.
I don't describe it as "not completely trivial" because I think it's some sort of laudable standard, but because you are implying that it is a completely trivial task.
Using information which in all likelihood is known to no-one else on this site but you, you've found a reliable method of uniquely identifying yourself. If you hadn't published it, the amount of effort required to identify you would probably be enough of an obstacle to deter anyone with a sudden hankering to investigate your recent LW browsing history from doing so.
My original comment was observing that I'm me, I know (and probably care) more about me than anyone else in the world, including specific technical information salient for tracking myself in a web activity logging context, and it was still far from immediately apparent as to who I was. If someone else knew (or cared) enough about me to try and do the same, they'd probably have better methods available to them.
It seem like our difference is about whether to give a worst-case security analysis or a best-case security analysis. :) It is a completely trivial task for a high percentage of potential targets. Some people aren't geolocated or are incorrectly geolocated. Some live in large cities. But a long tail of lesswrong users is almost completely identified by their geolocation.
No. The only information I used was that I am from Hungary. Nothing else. This fact about me is public here. (Obviously, nobody cares about it, but that does not make it a secret. Again, I am talking about worst-case analysis.)
I am really not monomaniac about privacy. I agree with you that it is not a big deal that somebody can be followed like that. But at least let's realize that lesswrong is unusual in this regard, and unusual in a bad way.