Inspectlet and Kissmetrics Monitoring – Again
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On 15 November, steineranalytics started a topic titled “Inspectlet and Kissmetrics Screen Capture and Keystroke Logging”, asking how a WordPress.com user could permanently opt-out of what appear to be an “an unconscionable violation of privacy”. I would agree with that assessment, based purely on Inspectlet.com’s own description of its operation. Screen capture and key logging are, to me at least, absolutely unacceptable and go beyond the implicit ‘Internet free stuff’ contract I and many people generally settle for: the Internet slurps some of my data and shows me ads; I get free stuff.
But WP does not need, and cannot justify, recording screenshots of my monitor or recording the keys I’m pressing. What if I’m doing my online banking in another window? Or filling in a medical questionnaire? Believe it or not, it isn’t only criminals who need be concerned with privacy. It is absolutely a fallacy that “if you’re doing nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to hide”.
Can Automattic understand why someone might be concerned about this? I appreciate most of the Internet seems inexplicably unmoved by the whole thing. There seems to be very little outcry. But perhaps most people are unaware of what is – potentially – going on? As steineranalytics said: “it was only by chance that I found out about these services. That you are capturing this information needs to be made more clear to users.” There certainly isn’t a great deal of effort to advertise the presence of these ‘tools’ and explain what they’re doing here.
steineranalytics was told: “You can find more information about how we use these tools http://wordpress.com/tos/”
Neither Inspectlet.com or Kissmetrics are mentioned on that page.
I posted a query about this myself on 25 October, but got no real reply beyond one poster demanding to know where I got the information from (answer: WordPress.com’s opt-out page and Inspectlet.com’s own description of itself).
The simplest thing for me to do, if I’m concerned about this, would be to ditch WordPress. If I can’t get some reassurance, I will have to do that. But the reason I’m making a fuss is because I LIKE WordPress and I would really like to stay here. So please, without referring me to a TOS page that doesn’t answer the question, can someone with knowledge please let me – and other users – know exactly what Inspectlet.com is doing here, and what surveillance methods in general WordPress is employing to monitor its users?
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Sorry, wrote a response but then the power went out with the lightning strike and it went poof.
I’ve tagged this for a Staff reply. Please be patient while waiting.
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Staff will respond to you but in the meanwhile note you can use Google search to find out more about both monitoring programs.
re:opting out
Scroll to the bottom of this page https://wordpress.com/settings/account/ to locate the opt-out links.Privacy
We use some third party tools to collect data about how users interact with our site. You can find more information about how we use these tools in our privacy policy. If you’d prefer that we not track your interactions you may opt out by using the following links:Inspectlet.com opt-out | Kissmetrics.com opt-out
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Our privacy policy can be viewed at http://automattic.com/privacy/
You can opt out of Kissmetrics tracking for WordPress.com and other sites here:
https://www.kissmetrics.com/user-privacyInspectlet offers a similar service:
https://www.inspectlet.com/optoutHowever, on WordPress.com’s end, we’re unable to turn off those services for individual users.
If the stats tracking worries you, you may wish to install WordPress from http://wordpress.org/ on a differnt hosting provider. We have some recommendations at http://get.wp.com/hosting/
Once that’s done, you can move your content following this guide: http://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog/#moving-to-wordpress-org
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jackiedana: Thank you for your reply, but I’m afraid it doesn’t help answer my concerns. I understand how to opt out, and have done so.
I’m particularly concerned about Inspectlet.com, which offers the facility to record screenshots. This is, as raincoaster says above, a very big deal. As I said, I’m happy – well, willing, at any rate – for providers-of-free-stuff to use anonymised data about me to serve their customers (that is, the advertisers you sell your space and our data to).
But screenshots and keylogging are NOT anonymised. They are personal, potentially sensitive and go way past what’s reasonable. That these firms require opt-OUT cookies tells me that they’re shady: if they were open about what they do and confident people would agree to it, they’d be content to use opt-IN cookies instead, and only subject us to surveillance if we give our explicit consent. Which they know people wouldn’t do, hence the preference for opt-out instead.
So my question for the Happiness Engineers (which I’m sure isn’t supposed to sound as creepy as it does to me) is to what extent WordPress supports these analytics ‘services’ monitoring my activity. When I use WordPress, am I to expect screenshots to be taken and my keystrokes logged?
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We use various systems for statistics collection, both for internal aggregate use and to assist in providing individual blog stats for our users. I’d like to reassure you that we do not have any interest in monitoring our users’ activity outside of tracking overall user patterns (how many people post in a month, things like that), and in general we take our users’ privacy very seriously. We are not logging keystrokes.
I share your concern in companies tracking user activity, and I appreciate your desire to opt out of anything that you can. However, to provide services to our users and make the platform as useful as possible, we do need to collect some statistics on how users interact with WordPress.com.
You can choose to opt out, as I mentioned, or you’re welcome to set up your own hosting elsewhere, though note that most hosting providers will also collect usage stats on their customers in some fashion.
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Hi, jackiedana, and thanks for the reply.
“We use various systems for statistics collection, both for internal aggregate use and to assist in providing individual blog stats for our users.”
I take that as read: as I said, I’m quite happy to accept the implicit “I get free stuff; you get some of my usage data” arrangement – within reason. Keylogging and screen capture would go beyond reason.
“I’d like to reassure you that we do not have any interest in monitoring our users’ activity outside of tracking overall user patterns (how many people post in a month, things like that), and in general we take our users’ privacy very seriously. We are not logging keystrokes.”
Good. Thank you for that. Are Kissmetrics or Inspectlet, through your site/s?
“I share your concern in companies tracking user activity, and I appreciate your desire to opt out of anything that you can.”
Anything that goes beyond what’s reasonable. Some people would consider any sort of monitoring or tracking unreasonable, but I’m sure most of us understand that there’s always a price, even for free things. That said, I’ll actively try to opt out of anything that I think gets too shady – and Inspectlet, by their own self-description, struck me as one of the shadier things I’d run into lately.
“You can choose to opt out, as I mentioned, or you’re welcome to set up your own hosting elsewhere, though note that most hosting providers will also collect usage stats on their customers in some fashion.”
That was well put. I’ve had to deal with whiny customers myself from time to time, and I’ve often struggled for a diplomatic way of telling them to put up or get lost. :o) No, I kid. And yes, you’re quite right: everyone tracks these days. It’s just the degree I’m concerned about.
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
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