Know your data 39: everyone's doing it
The USPS sends some data out, just like everyone else
Techcrunch did an investigation which uncovered that USPS (US Postal Office) is sending some private data of customres to social-media sites.
This news concerns USPS's "Informed Delivery" service, which allows customers to view images of their parcels en route. The website uses "tracking pixels" by companies such as Meta, Snap and Linkedin. So when users log on, the website requests the pixels (tiny images) from the servers of those companies, and in so doing, it is instructed to send data over. Techcrunch found that the data transmitted include physical addresses, user ids, computer and browser versions, etc. Those social-media companies then use the collected data to service advertisers and other partners.
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I'm glad Techcrunch brought attention to this type of data collection. It's a bit odd that they single out USPS which is a government agency for having these tracking pixels. Pretty much every website we visit has these pixels, if they have any relationship with those social-media companies. For example, if you schedule a doctor's appointment online, if the web form has these pixels, everything you type into the form might be captured by those companies.
When you visit a site, there may be a popup asking your approval for sharing data. It would say something like we work with [insert some large number like 948] partners. That tells you how prevalent this sort of thing is. If you haven't seen these pop-ups, your browser probably accepts everything.
It's also odd to point the finger at the USPS developers because it's the social-media companies that want the tracking, and they are the ones who direct the behavior of those pixels.
