ROW BOARD responds to the inquiries made on privacy concerns as follows:
It is well explained how Google Analytics (and the majority of large online companies) tracks demographic stats on the corresponding link, so we advise everyone interested in details to go there to read and understand the issue throughout. To highlight, there is no private information attached in the data used, even in the raw data demographic information is completely anonymous and is not attached to specific IPs, not even speaking about the little report requested by me and assisted in the compilation by Andy, when zero amount of personal data is disclosed. However, such information remains valuable for the statistic, research and analysis purposes. Bigger media are using it for advertising products, in our case it is may be leading to the need of creating more articles for younger generation which prevails among the website visitors or similar ideas.
Everyone probably is able to see the difference between saying:
A. Our website has been visited at 8.55 am by male aged around 55 from Victoria, Australia, who operates Google Chrome on Windows 8 and whose hobbies are listening to pop music, watching TV and gardening,
B. 31% of visitors of our website fall in 25-34 years old category, while 53% of them are male.
The second one is purely statistical, completely anonymous and contains no private data, you can see such notices daily on various websites and organizations. The first one may seem to be bordering with privacy concerns at first sight – but yet still doesn’t contain any private data that is associated and can be used to determine the exact person (such as name, e-mail address, computer IP). It is purely fictional example, though, as mentioned above demographic and interest data are not attached to the location data and is treated separately, and there is no major need or reason for us to offer tracking like that on the site, yet there are number of sites that use similar information about latest visitor on public display in their site counters.
It should remain clear that internet users themselves agree to provide their demographic data (approximate age and gender) and other tracking data (their location, browser information, interests, and hobbies) to various sites like for example social networks, online trade sites and to share it with Google and it’s partners worldwide. It is done by them on third party sites, no demographics data is extracted from their visit to esccovers, but from various previous data sharing between large internet companies. Of course, not every user even has this data stored, so roughly only half of visitors come with demographic data and are calculated for this purposes, but this is considered as reliable enough source of an estimate.
It is extremely difficult nowadays to remain anonymous in the internet. If you wish to try, perhaps you have to never register on social networking sites, never take part in online commerce and provide your data to any other online services, you have to completely stop storing cookies with your data on your computer and be browsing only through “private” tabs, use VPN or proxy services to protect your IP identity etc. This is a major question, which has no relations to how OGAE ROW operates and thus doesn’t belong to it’s discussion platforms.
However, it is important to remember, that OGAE ROW Facebook group in general is not intended for questioning the club’s authorities, but as a platform for Eurovision discussions and interaction between club members. Yes, from time to time me and Andy go out answering some membership questions posed on Facebook, but everyone should keep in mind there are specific means of communications set for the members inquiries in every organization. If there are questions related to the website, they should be directed to the website team at the specific contacts listed on the right for the website inquiries. If directed properly, one would have been referred to the Privacy and cookies policies of the website, which now I have also published as a separate post to highlight.
If there are ticket list questions, they can be submitted through people responsible for membership lists, currently it is Kyle, or to the general mail info@esccovers.com . Other general questions can be submitted through secretary Belinda or referred to member liaison Marcus. There always are people who are ready to help you. Yet, the system and the way communications are running in the club should not be abused. It tends to happen when people instead of using specific communication channels to share their questions or concerns go to public and launch debates based on unfounded claims, that have been not communicated with the club in the official way.