"Dutch suicide prevention hotline shares visitor data with tech companies" is certainly one way of saying "Dutch suicide prevention hotline website uses Google Analytics".

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vanschelven 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Google Analytics as well as Microsoft, which indeed makes "tech companies". What are you implying here really?

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simonw 23 minutes ago | parent [-]

The headline as written implies active sharing, at first glance it sounds like an active conspiracy between the website and Google.

Dropping Google Analytics on a page is not an active conspiracy.

	▲	vanschelven 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Dropping Google Analytics on a page is indeed precisely active sharing of data with Google; it just happens to use your own browser against you rather than sending the data to Google from the server of the website. There's no "active conspiracy" needed as long as this kind of behavior keeps being normalized by comments like the above.

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_def an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I get what you mean, but it's still perfectly accurate.

	▲	simonw 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sure it's accurate but it misleads people who only read the headlines. There are a bunch of comments in this Hacker News thread where the comment author seems to be assuming something a lot deeper than Google Analytics here.

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Spoom 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I thought the same thing but it's still not a good look. The big tech companies offering this sort of thing should probably find ways to give better guarantees about data isolation, even if that requires e.g. clients paying additional fees.

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caymanjim an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

You say that like there's a difference. You say that like the detail of data that Google Analytics farms is acceptable. You say that like what Google does with the data is acceptable. Just because companies want the data doesn't mean they deserve it.

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simonw 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

What does Google do with analytics data that's not acceptable to you?

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1011397 says "Regardless of your data sharing settings, your Analytics data may also be used only insofar as necessary to Maintain and protect the Analytics service."

	▲	philipwhiuk 8 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Maintain and protect the Analytics service This is a pretty broad leash. "To maintain the analytics service we need to make money"

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repelsteeltje 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Totally agree that Google should not be on a service like this in any shape or form.

But "sharing data" does somewhat suggest they are sharing the payload, the actual conversations.