Privacy Policy: No tracking vs. Google Analytics #55293

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Nomis Animations · 2018-06-02T11:41:24+02:00

Nomis Animations commented

2018-06-02 11:41:24 +02:00

I wanted to login with Blender ID and was greeted by the new privacy-policy-agreement form. After reading (and not agreeing to) it, i see some conflict in the following parts of the policy:

A promise!
Blender Foundation is committed to protect your privacy on blender.org. No third party will track you here. You will not find third-party advertisements on any blender.org website.

Analytics
We use Google Analytics to help us analyse how visitors use this site. The anonymous information generated by Google Analytics cookies about your use of this website is transmitted to Google. This information is processed to compile statistical reports on website activity for this site only. We use these reports to improve the blender.org website structure and offering. [...]

As i see it, Google Analytics is not locally installed on Blender.org-servers, but embedded in the site from Google-servers and sends data to Google.
Therefore Google seems to be a third party, tracking users on your site.

I wanted to login with Blender ID and was greeted by the new privacy-policy-agreement form. After reading (and not agreeing to) it, i see some conflict in the following parts of the policy: > A promise! > Blender Foundation is committed to protect your privacy on blender.org. **No third party will track you here.** You will not find third-party advertisements on any blender.org website. >Analytics >We use Google Analytics to help us analyse how visitors use this site. The anonymous information generated by **Google Analytics cookies** about your use of this website **is transmitted to Google.** This information is processed to compile statistical reports on website activity for this site only. We use these reports to improve the blender.org website structure and offering. [...] As i see it, Google Analytics is not locally installed on Blender.org-servers, but embedded in the site from Google-servers and sends data to Google. Therefore Google seems to be a third party, tracking users on your site.

Nomis Animations commented

2018-06-02 11:41:24 +02:00

Added subscriber: @SimonLohmann

Bastien Montagne commented

2018-07-22 17:47:11 +02:00

Added subscribers: @fsiddi, @pablovazquez, @mont29

Pablo Vazquez was assigned by Bastien Montagne

2018-07-22 17:47:11 +02:00

Bastien Montagne commented

2018-07-22 17:47:11 +02:00

@venomgfx @fsiddi I guess that’s for you guys?

Francesco Siddi commented

2018-07-22 18:32:12 +02:00

The Blender ID policy is different from the blender.org website policy. Could you please clarify to which privacy policy you are referring to?

At the moment, in order to entirely block Google Analytics, we recommend to use this tool https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout or an ad blocker.

The Blender ID policy is different from the blender.org website policy. Could you please clarify to which privacy policy you are referring to? At the moment, in order to entirely block Google Analytics, we recommend to use this tool https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout or an ad blocker.

Nomis Animations commented

2018-07-23 21:18:27 +02:00

Thanks for the reply.

In #55293#520815, @fsiddi wrote:
At the moment, in order to entirely block Google Analytics, we recommend to use this tool https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout or an ad blocker.

Sorry for the harsh words, but from a users point this sounds like the little brother of "yeah, we have some viruses in our product-installer, just install an additional anti-virus tool".
Maybe there are some statistics-tools available that you can install locally on the blender-servers?

Could you please clarify to which privacy policy you are referring to?

For reconstruction: I originally wanted to login to my Blender-Cloud account. Then i was shown a message like "this is our new privacy policy", a link to the new conditions and an "accept" button.
I've just searched for my quoted text and it seems the link to the new conditions directed me to the standard Blender.org policy: https://www.blender.org/privacy-policy/

So this seems to split into two problems:

I was shown the wrong "new" policy when trying to login (as BlenderID should have a different policy...which i cant find on https://www.blender.org/id/ by the way?)
The contradiction of "no third-party tracking" vs. Google Analytics beeing a third party

Thanks for the reply. > In #55293#520815, @fsiddi wrote: > At the moment, in order to entirely block Google Analytics, we recommend to use this tool https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout or an ad blocker. Sorry for the harsh words, but from a users point this sounds like the little brother of "yeah, we have some viruses in our product-installer, just install an additional anti-virus tool". Maybe there are some statistics-tools available that you can install locally on the blender-servers? > Could you please clarify to which privacy policy you are referring to? For reconstruction: I originally wanted to login to my Blender-Cloud account. Then i was shown a message like "this is our new privacy policy", a link to the new conditions and an "accept" button. I've just searched for my quoted text and it seems the link to the new conditions directed me to the standard Blender.org policy: https://www.blender.org/privacy-policy/ So this seems to split into two problems: - I was shown the wrong "new" policy when trying to login (as BlenderID should have a different policy...which i cant find on https://www.blender.org/id/ by the way?) - The contradiction of "no third-party tracking" vs. Google Analytics beeing a third party

Francesco Siddi commented

2018-07-24 00:29:40 +02:00

Hi Nomis,

In the past I have been looking into alternatives to Google Analytics, and as you can imagine, they all come at a cost. Investigating this further is on my todo list.

About the two problems:

The Blender ID Privacy policy is available here https://www.blender.org/id/privacy-policy
According to the Google Analytics documentation, we are only serving first-pary-cookies - so maybe there is a misunderstanding about the meaning of first-party?

There is definitely room for improvement in this area, so thank you for sharing your feedback. I just pushed a commit in Blender ID, which makes the Privacy Policy and ToS visible in the footer of the blender.org/id site. It will be live tomorrow.

Hi Nomis, In the past I have been looking into alternatives to Google Analytics, and as you can imagine, they all come at a cost. Investigating this further is on my todo list. About the two problems: 1. The Blender ID Privacy policy is available here https://www.blender.org/id/privacy-policy 2. According to the [Google Analytics documentation](https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage), we are only serving first-pary-cookies - so maybe there is a misunderstanding about the meaning of first-party? There is definitely room for improvement in this area, so thank you for sharing your feedback. I just [pushed a commit](https://git.blender.org/gitweb/gitweb.cgi/blender-id.git/commit/254df545cf8a1ede7c4a48b6c37f61bd2aee3f1f) in Blender ID, which makes the Privacy Policy and ToS visible in the footer of the blender.org/id site. It will be live tomorrow.

Pablo Vazquez removed their assignment 2019-11-07 16:42:39 +01:00

Kenzie commented

2021-02-09 03:01:48 +01:00

Added subscriber: @KenzieMac130

Anna Sirota commented

2022-01-10 17:31:27 +01:00

Added subscriber: @railla

Anna Sirota commented

2022-01-10 17:31:27 +01:00

Changed status from 'Confirmed' to: 'Archived'

Anna Sirota closed this issue

2022-01-10 17:31:27 +01:00

Anna Sirota commented

2022-01-10 17:31:27 +01:00

Blender ID's privacy policy mentions GA, and currently we don't have capacity to move away from it (albeit we'd like to), so I'd consider this closed, at least for now.

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