Tracking visitors and legal/ethical matters

[southbeach]

A company contacted my company and offered our sales dept. a mean to track our visitors (by plugging a JS within our site) and obtain from them a Name, Date and Time for each visitor ... thus teasing our sales dept. to possibly take it to the next level and buy the full prospective information.

I spoke with this company and after pulling some teeth, they admit to only be effective if IP is in their "massive" database.

I objected to this since if provides them with means to track our visitors and feed their databases and then sale this information to others in the same industry. All this, while our visitor is not aware.

I offered my sales dept. a report of visitors but really, what can I possibly offer? All I can get is the IP address, what are they going to do with this?

I know that in some instances the IP will resolve a web page but this is not always the case.

QUESTIONS:
Should I cave in to this other company and add a Privacy page where this is fully disclosed?

Is there any mean which I can use to obtain more complete information about the visitors without involving this other company?

No matter what, I believe that a Privacy page should be added and disclose what we do (if we ever get around to it).

Thank you all in advance!


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SouthBeach
The good thing about not knowing is the opportunity to learn - Yours truly, 2008.

 

[jpadie]

i'm a technology lawyer, data protection/privacy is a particular area of expertise. i can give you an answer for the UK but not for the US.

technologically, IP address is not very useful. most tracking systems rely on a cookie delivered, usually, over a pixel. further, a marketing department absolutely should not need a name for the information to be valuable. identification by past behaviour should be sufficient.

 

[southbeach]

I can track what, where and when visitors hit any given page. But if all I know is this, how then can we put this information to use?

I mean, my sales dept. is trying to have a mean to know who came in and possibly contact them even if they do no make the request via our 'Contact Us' form.

I do not want to involve the 3rd party company but sales dept. is notorious for getting its way.



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SouthBeach
The good thing about not knowing is the opportunity to learn - Yours truly, 2008.

 

[vacunita]

I mean, my sales dept. is trying to have a mean to know who came in and possibly contact them even if they do no make the request via our 'Contact Us' form.

How incredibly annoying would that be?

How would you like it if every website you visited started contacting you at home, or through your email to see if you have interest in their product. Web browsing should be anonymous. If they don't want to contact you then your company has no right contacting them.

This would be in the same level of annoyance as telemarketers that call you at dinner time at your home.

Would you want say Amazon or Google to call you and offer you a service or product you looked at but did not purchase or activate?

Using IP's you can get an idea of what your visitors are looking at. If you have product pages you can determine which products are getting looked at the most, or which ones aren't etc...

Or if the same IP is looking at the same products through out different periods of time.

Please tell your marketing department that calling up people who happen to browse your web site will only alienate them even more.

I would not return to a site and tell all my friends not to go to a site that had that kind of practice.



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[IPGuru]

I mean, my sales dept. is trying to have a mean to know who came in and possibly contact them even if they do no make the request via our 'Contact Us' form.

that would result in you company being placed on my personal "Black List" & Garantee that I would NEVER do business with them.

 

[southbeach]

These are exactly the point I am trying to drive home or through the thick skull (hence my subject legal and ethical).

Never mind that my sales reps want to get that information, I have a bigger problem with having a 3rd company JS doing to harvesting of data ... at this point, we will not have any say nor control as to what happens to that data and how it is used.

When I was first approach about this my skin felt cold and I bled as I bit my tongue trying to contain myself and bursting out at the idea.

I will fight it best I can and make sure I keep CYA material for when and if it hits the fan.

Thanks!


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SouthBeach
The good thing about not knowing is the opportunity to learn - Yours truly, 2008.

 

[ingresman]

In the UK we have a junk mail preferecne agency which you can contact if you don't want junk mail sent to you. I belive if marketing companies ignore this there is a hefty fine for each occuracne. I think a telephone preference agency also exists to stop getting double glazing salesman late in the evening.
Can you imagine having this in place for web based companies ?.
Does this kind of thing exist around the world ?

 

[IPGuru]

Th UK/EU does also have anti spam legislation, but because most originates outside the UK/EU it is as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

My previous post was made to supply the OP with additional Amo to help him in his fight to stop his sale Dept. behaving in a disreputable manner.
I hope it helps
good luck.

 

[johnwm]

I suspect you will get more practical feedback if you post this in forum717

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[smah]

This system is rather common in the manufaucturing/engineering world. As mentioned in the first post, in order to get anything particularly useful about the individual users, they would have had to already be members of the third-party site (are the initials TN?). When the members sign up at that third-party site, they are accepting the TOS that allows contact by the vendors that they visit. Withouth this signup, the third-party isn't able to collect any user info that you couldn't collect yourself.

 

[southbeach]

@smah,

If a user registers and accepts TOS, I would not have much of a problem. In this case, there is not registration nor questionnaire.

The 3rd party, those whom are providing the JS to track visitors, claim to have a massive DB which enables them to cross-reference the IPs to their respective owners.

I am working on tracking link hits, time in/out and things of that nature ... Lets see how then can use this. Our contact forms are perfectly fine and I argue that if some one wanted to be contacted, they will suggest so via our forms, as many already do.

Thanks,


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SouthBeach
The good thing about not knowing is the opportunity to learn - Yours truly, 2008.

 

[Foamcow]

Would you want say Amazon or Google to call you and offer you a service or product you looked at but did not purchase or activate?

Amazon do that. I've had a number of emails recently regarding items I've browsed but not purchased.

However, they can identify me because I'm logged in and have effectively agreed to their TOS. Besides, I have no problem with it as sometimes it might be of interest to me and is an insignificant inconvenience.

Even if this company has a database that matched every IP on the planet to it's "owner" it wouldn't be much use to your marketing deptarment unless everyone had a static IP.

The only way this sort of thing can work at all is if you first capture the visitor's contact information along with their IP. Even then it will only work if they have a static IP. Can you offer your company that?

That said, we use a particular Image Library. If someone in our studio browses their site (while logged in) we get a call from them about an hour later. It's very annoying, so much so that people here are reluctant to visit their site and prefer to buy images from elsewhere. Somewhat counterproductive really.

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[Foamcow]

Hit submit too soon!

Your Marketing Dept. will not want to listen to any of those arguments.

Try this tact instead. Tell them that whilst it's possible to get 'some' information that generally it's going to be of such poor quality that ultimately it will be a waste of money.

You'll get some 'hits' but you'll get many, many more 'misses'. Unless you are selling a very high value product where 1 sale will cover the time and costs involved in setting up the system, making the calls etc. the low ROI just won't be worth it.

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