Update 01-2012: AddToAny now includes tracking by parent company Lockerz.com which cannot easily be disabled.
After discovering AddToAny secretly enrolls all of my blogs visitors in a behavioral marketing platform, I disabled the plugin and mailed the author for more information. He answered the media6degrees-integration was a partner-test, only providing them with non-personally identifiable data, which the company indeed can use for targeted advertising. But the good news was that AddToAny would also offer a “publisher opt-out mechanism” shortly. And indeed, last week, Pat announced the brand new a2a api and mailed me the following opt-out code;
var a2a_config = a2a_config || {};
a2a_config.no_3p = 1;
These two lines of javascript, which have to be placed in front of the http://static.addtoany.com/menu/page.js script-include, should disable all current and future 3rd party tracking. I hope the web-guys from e.g. deredactie.be and standaard.be (and there are many others) implement this as soon as possible!
So now we can opt-out from having our visitors being spied upon by media6degrees, what more could one want? Well, since you’re asking, here’s a small list of things AddToAny could really should do;
- transparency; tell users that their visitors’ information will be shared with 3rd parties (in all relevant places)
- documentation: show them how to “remove the spy” on the AddToAny api page (“no_3p” isn’t there)
- ease-of-use: allow the tracking to be disabled with a simple checkbox in the WordPress and Drupal plugins
The opt-out code is a important first step and I’m sure concerns such as those voiced on the WordPress-forums will help AddToAny to further make the right decisions!