Etsy - evil to the core.

This new scandal of Etsy being Class-Action sued along with like 12 other sites for using Kissmetrics, a invasive, privacy busting tracking cookie that is so insidious it cannot be deleted, detected, and often will "come  back to life" and replicate it self later if it should go dormant or removed in some way. They are called "Zombie Cookies" and you should look that up online. There were recent Facebook and NetFlix suits recently over this very same issue, each resulted in a over 10Mil awards.

With the scale and scope of this lawsuit with not only Kissmetrics being sued but 12 or so of its clients, of which Etsy and the Etsy favorite Moo.com are some, and so many customers involved, this lawsuit could go into the triple digit millions.

We here at EB have known about this problem awhile, approached several months ago by some legal eagles about these "Zombie Cookies". We knew this case was coming despite it looking like Etsy has stopping using the service, the cookies might still be active on your computer. We've been waiting to announce it.

You can find other articles about what the cookies do, the Etsy forums are swimming in them, the blogs are humming, we instead decided to tell you how deep the rabbit hole really goes.

Etsy is selling you instead of you selling on Etsy.

The true insidiousness of this comes down to the tracking. In itself it's evil, but with the way we think it's been working at Etsy it's like this...  You go to Etsy and search for say "crystal earrings" look around then leave.

After leaving you might start to notice ads for crystal jewelry on websites you visit. You might find it offered to you on other buying sites as a suggestion. You preference at Etsy was entered into the system, and then the system goes to work to get your money anyway possible by trying to sell you the items you were looking for on Etsy.

These cookies aren't just tracking you on Etsy, they follow you everywhere, they watch the other sites you visit and what you search for. Etsy just kinda  tags on with more info of your prefs and likes, info that will be used later in selling advertising to court your money later.

I actually have seen this in action myself. I went to a site recently that specializes in portable air conditioners, since my western exposure studio is rather small warm on sunny days. I went to this site ONCE. I had never heard of it before. Now when I go to sites liek CNN, Ebay, Amazon I am constantly being bombarded with  banner ads for this store that I had never heard of before but they are everywhere now. I literally can't go a day to a commercial or mainline site without encountering an ad for this same company now. Tag, I'm it.

This is why I don't think Etsy ever gave a damn about how you can't find what you want due to search sucking, in fact I will go so far as to suggest it might even be engineered that way. They want buyers to search around typing in more and more things and failing. Because after you get tired looking on etsy you will search for something else, and give that system a second lead on you, or you will go elsewhere to buy. They get money from the tracking services for sending in millions and millions of qualified leads hopefully to of it's advertisers that buys this info and markets you those ads that magically seem to know what you are looking for!

So essentially what is happening is Etsy is making money by sending customers away in frustration, possibly more money as a result that even actual sales would bring in if they stayed. We're talking at least a couple dollars bounty per head, and when you are the #53 or whatever site on the internet that's a lot of bounties. Plus Etsy is making money on all your listing and relisting, but without those listings they don't have content for people to fruitlessly search, plus they get to make money off sellers as well as the buyers without anyone buying a thing, especially since they love to push relisting! It's a fucking cash cow.

This pervasive advertising from zombie cookie tracking like 10x more evil than Amazon's "you might also like" feature (you look at ONE book for academic book for porn in history for a friend's Xmas and you are pinned for life there) because it wont just live on the site you looked for the items from... it will follow you everywhere. And it can't be killed. Or removed.

Just one bite and it's in your bloodstream and you are fucked. Maybe this lawsuit will be the armor piercing round to the temple.

Here is a useful post from trinlayk regarding some things to install into Firefox (yes people STOP USING IE GODDAMN IT) to not only find and kill these cookies but ways to keep looking for them and stopping them in their tracks. 

And remember folks, if you find any of these on your systems - MAKE A SCREENSHOT OF IT! Especially if you want to join in any lawsuit.