The Coronavirus pandemic rapidly accelerated the trend of local shops moving online as many were forced to close temporarily, while others aim to promote home deliveries for those in self-isolation. Jersey has a very active and talented Digital community, and online “shops of shops” aggregator websites seem to be popping up left, right, and centre.
This is fantastic to see and recognition is due to the technical people working behind the scenes, with some working below market rates and some donating their time to help keep local businesses solvent. With this digital publishing power comes responsibility, however, and not all the new websites are transparent about how they treat visitor data.
Operating a website comes with certain expectations, for example users don’t want malware or those awful “sign up for our newsletter” pop-ups, and they have a legal right to know how you handle their data. Users also do not want creepy third-party advertising networks tracking them, so site operators are obliged to disclose this tracking when used.
Ad company Google are crystal clear about this in their Terms of Service, stating “You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy must provide notice of Your use of cookies, identifiers for mobile devices (e.g., Android Advertising Identifier or Advertising Identifier for iOS) or similar technology used to collect data. You must disclose the use of Google Analytics, and how it collects and processes data.”
Analytics are useful, but there are many ways to measure web traffic that do not involve subjecting visitors to third-party advertising networks.
Want people to really trust you? Try prioritising your visitor’s privacy rights over your desire to subject them to digital surveillance.
Ratings Criteria
Privacy
A = No third-party advertising networks tracking visitors
C = At least one third-party advertising network tracking visitors
F = Multiple third-party advertising networks tracking visitors
Transparency
A = Third-party advertising network tracking disclosed in privacy policy, or none in use.
C = Third-party advertising network tracking in use, not disclosed in Privacy Policy.
F = Third-party advertising network tracking in use, with No Privacy Policy
And now here are the rankings, from best to worst.
GetFresh.je
Link: getfresh.je
First registered 19th March 2020, this site does not appear to allow third-party advertising networks to track visitors.
This website has a very comprehensive privacy policy.
Digital Jersey’s “Shop from Home” page
Link: digital.je/connected-jersey/shopping-home-delivery
First Registered 19th January 2011, this website uses third-party advertising tracker Google Tag Manager with account number GTM-KVVBMV4.
This website’s privacy policy does disclose their usage of Google Analytics.
Fetch Jersey
Link: fetch.je
First Registered 19th April 2017 and recently launched, this website uses third-party advertising tracker Google Tag Manager with account number GTM-THK3MMF.
While this website does have a (lengthy!) privacy policy, it does not warn visitors about the third-party advertising network tracking code it uses.
Shop Jersey
Link: shopjersey.je
First Registered 8th February 2011, this website uses third-party advertising tracker Google Tag Manager with account number GTM-KVVBMV4.
This website does have a privacy policy, however it is very primitive and does not warn visitors about the third-party advertising network tracking code it uses.
JEP Local
Link: jeplocal.com
First Registered 24th March 2020, this website uses third-party advertising tracker Google Analytics with account number UA-3675256-43.
This website has no privacy policy and does not warn visitors about the third-party advertising network tracking code it uses.
collect.je
Link: collect.je
First Registered 16th March 2020, this website uses third-party advertising tracker Google Analytics with account number UA-161266682-1.
This website has no privacy policy and does not warn visitors about the third-party advertising network tracking code it uses.
Give to Get Project
Link: givetogetproject.com
First Registered 26th March 2020, this website uses third-party advertising tracker Google Analytics with account number UA-162146396-1. It also uses Facebook ‘Pixel’ tracking code with account ID number 146248146775174.
This website has no privacy policy and does not warn visitors about the third-party advertising network tracking code it uses.
In Conclusion
Users, you can take matters into your own hands and protect yourself from advertising network tracking by installing an ad-blocker on all your devices. Malware distributors prefer to use ad networks so it’s win/win for you, no more creepy tracking and better security.
Website operators, consider removing the ad network tracking because you don’t need it. Most of these businesses are taking their first baby steps online, Google Analytics is overkill. You can obtain basic visitor data and referrer information from your server logs, or skip it entirely. Business owners will know it’s working when the orders start coming in again, your nerdy stats and graphs are superfluous.
If you are donating your time to assist local businesses I will do the same for you should you be willing to switch, just ask. And as an extra bonus, you will finally see accurate visitor counts since so many people already use ad blockers which means they are not counted by Google Analytics.
1007UTC 9th April 2020
GetFresh.je added a privacy policy.