Removing and documenting 3rd party tracking pixel on AddToAny

3rd party tracking can be disabled by adding one line to the Additional Options box:
a2a_config.no_3p = 1;

(From http://www.addtoany.com/buttons/api/)

I noticed this behavior today just by chance, and am thinking of removing the module altogether or try other alternatives. This is really unprofessional on the part of addtoany.

Thanks micropat for the info, that was easy enough. Tracking cookies are fine for my sites, but some clients may prefer to have it disabled in the future. I'm glad AddToAny has this option because "Add This" and "Share This" do not.

Could this be considered for adding to the read me?

The presence of this third-party tracking cookie is still not disclosed on this module's Drupal.org page. Reactivating and moving to webmasters queue. I also filed a feature request to add this as a checkbox option to the UI.

I believe that the tracking pixel should be disabled by default.

+1 default to having tracking disabled.

moving back to project so this can be acted upon.

Please comment on whether this is still relevant.

I may be mistaken but I can not find any reference to the no_3p option in the current stable releases. The very least is that this should be documented in the admin section and on the project page.

This should be explicitly mentioned at http://drupal.org/project/addtoany, Drupal team should take care of such things as it affects privacy. What about users who are using this module and unaware of this thing ?

I added a notice to the project page.

thanks

Yes, another thank you for this information and placing a link on the project page.

Oh yes, just a little off topic but noticed comment #4 that it be in the readme and on first using this module noticed there is no readme. But, nevermind it truly is as simple as enable, permission, configure and use. Very well done.

Might be reassuring to some new users to know they don't need a readme; but then you'd need a readme to tell them :-)

Since AddtoAny has been recently acquired by Lockerz (http://www.addtoany.com/blog/addtoany-lockerz-share-universal-sharing/), I notice there is now also a connection made to http://pts.lockerz.com, so probably a second hidden tracker.

thanks, the notice on the project site is sufficiently general. I am marking this fixed.

I added a documentation page about this at http://drupal.org/node/1833666, along with a guide to how to remove some of the services, etc.

They have their javascript in an iframe which also has a 1px tracking GIF beacon as well as setting a cookie, on domain lockerz.

They claim they do not collect individual data in their privacy policy.

I personally don't know what to think since "sharing" by it's nature is automatically a privacy violation, but I saw others flipping out on the javascript which is fine, the iframe is fine, it's for loading, but there is the cookie and web beacon.