Tracking Cookies

lenny_eiger
lenny_eiger
Community Member

I get that you might want to have a normal cookie here for some web interaction, and I'm ok with it. What are you putting tracking cookies on my computer for? I have a Cookie Manager that deletes them eery 60 seconds, but its just plain rude. In this world of constant harassment by many companies that want to suck all your contacts out of your computer, or track everywhere you go on the web, I thought you folks would be on the right side of this, that you would want our lives, and our personal information to be secure.
Alas, no.
I have recommended you to lots of folks, I pay lots of money every year to have a business account. I have a lot of time invested in this, categorizing all the different passwords, making sure they are all secure.
What is going on over there? This is insane. Tracking ? Really ?


1Password Version: 7.0.2
Extension Version: 4.7.1
OS Version: 10.13.4
Sync Type: Subscription

Comments

  • lenny_eiger
    lenny_eiger
    Community Member

    So my post got moved to the lounge, without so much as a simple reply, or a by your leave. I really would like to know what your tracking cookies are tracking. I think its a reasonable question...

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni
    edited June 2018

    @lenny_eiger: Sorry for the confusion. Since your post doesn't pertain to 1Password on any platform, Lounge is a better place for this more general topic.

    I don't think anyone's suggesting you don't have a reasonable question, but if you can clarify what it is you're asking that would be helpful. To be completely honest, I'm not entirely sure what "tracking cookies" you're referring to, so please be more specific about what you're seeing so that me and anyone else who wants to participate in this discussion can do so.

    But, to be clear, cookies are not able to "suck all your contacts out of your computer". You may be confusing them with malware. But cookies are not software; they're simple text that websites can use to store "state" so that stuff like shopping carts and login sessions can persist.

    For example, while the forum software has some odd quirks, usually I can get it to keep me signed in so I'm not having to login again each time I want to write a post.

    Anyway, let me know more about what you're after, and I'll be happy to look into it. :)

  • lenny_eiger
    lenny_eiger
    Community Member

    Brenty, This does pertain to 1Password on the web. I just pulled up a browser, went to 1Password.com and voila, there are two tracking cookies in my system. They are labeled _ga and _gat. They are apparently insecure.
    Tacking cookies are used to "track" your activity on different web sites, including what sites you go to, what you buy when you are there, etc. They keep inventing super-cookies that do more but those are often blocked. However, web sites are supposed to respect the "do-not-track" preferences of a browser, which you are not doing. The only reason to track web users' movements thru the web is targeted advertising, and for collecting data for Acxiom and other sharing. Mostly for purposes I am not in favor of. I don't need targeted advertising, or to have my personal information collected or shared, beyond what Agilebits needs to do to secure my info, supply the services I have requested and generally do business with me.
    This is just not something Agilebits should be doing, IMHO. I pay $146 a year for my account and I do NOT want my information about where I have been, or anything else, to be sold to third parties. It's the opposite of helping me to secure my world appropriately, and I would posit, against your "Private by Design" statement.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Brenty, This does pertain to 1Password on the web.

    @lenny_eiger: Thanks for getting back to me! I'm still a bit confused, but that helps.

    I just pulled up a browser, went to 1Password.com and voila, there are two tracking cookies in my system. They are labeled _ga and _gat. They are apparently insecure.

    Insecure how? Here's mine:

    1Password.com cookies only work at *.1password.com. I don't see how that is insecure.

    Tacking cookies are used to "track" your activity on different web sites, including what sites you go to, what you buy when you are there, etc. They keep inventing super-cookies that do more but those are often blocked. However, web sites are supposed to respect the "do-not-track" preferences of a browser, which you are not doing. The only reason to track web users' movements thru the web is targeted advertising, and for collecting data for Acxiom and other sharing.

    Since we don't have any advertisements, that's simply not the case.

    Mostly for purposes I am not in favor of. I don't need targeted advertising, or to have my personal information collected or shared, beyond what Agilebits needs to do to secure my info, supply the services I have requested and generally do business with me.

    Yep. We're in complete agreement there. You can learn more about the kinds of information we do collect, and what we do with it, here:

    About 1Password and your privacy

    We're also HIPAA and GDPR compliant.

    This is just not something Agilebits should be doing, IMHO. I pay $146 a year for my account and I do NOT want my information about where I have been, or anything else, to be sold to third parties. It's the opposite of helping me to secure my world appropriately, and I would posit, against your "Private by Design" statement.

    Exactly. That's why we sell neither ads nor user information. Given that, can you explain to me what you'd like us to do? We can't stop doing things we're already not doing.

    I think you're just misunderstanding what you're seeing and/or reading into it and making assumptions. We simply don't collect user data, except to the extent that we need to know a few things about a user to be able to provide service: email address for accessing an account, IP address to be able to serve content (web pages, app downloads, etc.), payment details so we can make a living.

    The whole reason we charge sustainable prices for our products is because we don't sell ads or user data, and so we continue being an independent Canadian company free of outside investment or influence.

    I'm sorry if there's some confusion about cookies, but cookies are not inherently evil, and not all are used for the kind of tracking or data collection you're talking about. We track how many people visit our website and the pages they visit there so that we can improve it. And when you login to any 1Password.com account, we keep track of that so we can offer any accounts you use on the sign in page for easy access:

    I hope that helps clarify things. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

  • lenny_eiger
    lenny_eiger
    Community Member
    edited June 2018

    Brenty, I'm glad to hear that your company won't rent or sell. Here's my pic showing what I am seeing (in Cookie 5).

    I am curious what you think about this.
    Is cookie reporting it wrong? Or is there something about those cookies that won't pass, whole the others do? In this app, red indicates a tracking cookies vs normal cookies.

    Lenny

  • Hi @lenny_eiger,

    I believe that the ga/gat cookies you're seeing there are from the www.1Password.com website as opposed to the my.1Password.com webapp. We use Google Analytics on the former, and I believe that's what the ga stands for in those cookies.

    The other cookies you're seeing, the ones for account.1Password.com are what allow us to populate the start.1password.com account list in a meaningful way.

    I hope that helps.

    Rick

  • lenny_eiger
    lenny_eiger
    Community Member

    I understand. I don't trust Google. I don't even use their search engine anymore. I think they have failed miserably on the "Don't be Evil" mission. Glad to know that's all it is, but I still don't trust them as far as I can throw them.... Today I learned Apple is going to disallow identifiers related to the fonts in each of our systems and a whole host of other system-level items. I didn't even know that was happening ! I get why you would want to use ga... but I would recommend another way... just my 2 cents. Thanks for answering..

  • Thanks for the feedback, @lenny_eiger. We do take privacy very seriously and will continue to evaluate the available options in this regard.

    Ben

This discussion has been closed.