I’m enjoying my stay this weekend, but the Big Cedar Resort uses click tracking software, which is unethical and unnecessary. Some details of this “superclick” tracking system are on nerdblog and swiK. There is much discussion of the system on SlashDot.
My take on this is that “don’t be evil” is good policy, and not only for Google. In addition to a very healthy room rate, this place charges $10 for every 24 hours of connectivity – a rate of $300 per month! That should be enough – they should not also sell me out for a system that “allows hoteliers and conference center managers to leverage the investment they have made in their IP infrastructure to create advertising revenue, deliver targeted marketing and brand messages to guests and users on their network.”
Big Cedar and SuperClick: I do not want to be leveraged. I do not want to be targeted. I do want to stay at a nice resort, with access to problem-free and spy-free internet connectivity.
Update: In addition to the issues above, this remarkably bad system also breaks the back button on many web sites.
Despite the fact that this is getting more and more coverage, the hotels don’t appear to be getting the message. I stayed at the holiday inn express, in San Francisco CA, and they had this system, which is a first for me (i think). the noscrips addon for firefox kept nailing it until i finally figured out what the problem was.
i will be watching for this in the future, and the holiday inn on fisherman’s wharf has seen me for the last time.