I don't think most websites honestly care about personal data. What most sites want to know is what anonymous users are doing on their sites so they can improve them.
I for one need this data on a daily basis to help me decide how to make products better. I think the legislation doesn't do it's job properly. Why not force it so that like apple, the browser informs the websites that they don't want to be tracked, then it is the websites issue if they are caught tracking. Or all browsers forcibly obscure a users PII.
I have made a living selling a software product for more than ten years without any behavior tracking at all. I just don't think tracking users is necessary.
Analytics companies that try to sell their analytics will of course tell you that you need analytics, but I just don't think it's true.
The only analytics I need are sales numbers. When they go up, I know I'm on the right track :)
The way I learn about my customers is that I put my email address on every page of my website. And then I read emails that folks send me, and this way I learn way more about my customers than any analytics could tell me, all without invading someones privacy.
(There is one exception: My apps do send crash reports, but they only send stack traces, no user data, and I don't log any identifiable info like IP addresses.)
The ad industry used to target ads by aiming at a publication’s audience or subscriber base. The publication would conduct surveys or do Nielsen rating type measures to get a sense who their audience was.
When publications online went from trying to build an audience to trying to drive traffic we ended up with the situation we have now. They don’t have audiences anymore, they have atomized bits of content without much in the way of editorial voice or culture to tie it together. They care not one whit about making their site a destination, just trying to chum the waters for whatever will bring in a catch of fresh eyeballs.
I for one need this data on a daily basis to help me decide how to make products better. I think the legislation doesn't do it's job properly. Why not force it so that like apple, the browser informs the websites that they don't want to be tracked, then it is the websites issue if they are caught tracking. Or all browsers forcibly obscure a users PII.