Alexa Good and Bad

Secure Surfing users should realize that there is a big difference between rating a privacy policy and recommending the use of the site or services to which the policy relates.

For example, Alexa.com’s Privacy Policy gives high disclosure, providing direct and unambiguous information about what it collects from users. The policy also does a better job than most in directly addressing the fundamental principles of privacy protection although, again like most, it completely rejects the principles of time limited storage of data and like the worst it flatly denies users the right to delete information gathered about them.

Still, in a global comparison Alexa comes out very well if only because of the level of detail its policy provides on what is collected and how it will be shared around and used. Although the language is massaged to talk about helping users “discover interesting sites” and so on, this type of spinning is common and most of the spinners never get down to reporting in writing that they will track the user’s every move.

Alexa does frankly state that it will track every web site you visit, what you buy when you shop and pretty much everything you do that can be in some way connected to an Alexa service. Google does the same and with more aggressive and pervasive tools but is not nearly as up front as Alexa.

So we kind of like Alexa’s Privacy Policy compared to many other web services.

Because we kind of like the policy does not mean we kind of like the service. In fact the best feature of full and frank disclosure is that it gives users a choice.

In this case, the choice should be to NOT use Alexa’s toolbar or search service if you are concerned about maintaining your privacy and preventing the agglomeration of massive personal data warehouses.

To acknowledge the rebuttal of Alexa and like-minded intensive user trackers, they assert that the information they collect is not “personal” or that it is sufficiently sanitized that it loses its personal character.

We must reject these assertions out of hand.

You don’t need any of the toolbars from Alexa or all the others which are plainly designed to intensively monitor your behaviour on the internet.

For searches you can use IxQuick which not only does not record your IP address, it also does not retain logs of user searches.

Or alternatively, you can use Scroogle which sets up a secure and clean gateway to use Google searches without any of the monitoring.

So, Alexa Privacy Policy, pretty good. Alexa services, bad, stay away.