Re:Show HN: Trackless - A GDPR-Friendly Google Analytics Opt...
by jdietrich on Sunday May 27, 2018 @11:28AM
(#17167247)
May I ask how GA anonymizes ip address?
If you enable the Anonymize setting, the last octet (IPv4) or last 80 bits (IPv6) is set to zero by the analytics collector. The full IP is never stored or processed.
I am asking this as a friend of mine is having hard time accomplishing exactly that and is really a hard nut to crack, anonymization is by default irreversable and making such algorythm for 4 numbers (actually even less due to known ip address ranges for EU users + reserved ranges) is not simple. You can seed it but that key must remain unknown to google, while this is again getting very hard with javascript. The only way I see is sending all the data to local proxy script, anonymizing the data on your side and then sending it to GA.
I thing that if GA is doing just some hashing, this opens all the sites, using it, to a GDPR responsibility as data controllers including HN. And this can't be hidden under capet (imho) as a "I can't offer service without it" (legitimate interest).