Sorry about that. But it is more important that Google doesn't store every website I visit to build a better profile of me.

It is against the terms of service of Google analytics to pass any PII such that you can track an event back to any particular person. On top of that, the code for Google Analytics js is available for your review, along with its network requests, such that you can hold them to their word.

In most cases wouldn't it just be enough that you're logged into your Google account recently via the same IP

The section about "personally identifiable" information in the Google Analytics Terms of Service [1] does not limit Google, but the site using GA.

Practically, I'm not sure that can even be enforced, or that Google has any incentive to enforce it. If a site uniquely tags each user via custom variables, or by sending users to a unique resource/goal/interim URL, will Google detect this and obscure/destroy the resulting data? Or is such tracking for the site's own purposes a core feature of GA?

And Google often has its own PII about the same user, from other visits to Google's own sites, anyway.

[1] http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html - section 7 "Privacy"

you are allowed to uniquely identify a user with a "User ID" which is different than the "Client ID"

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...

> It is against the terms of service of Google analytics to pass any PII such that you can track an event back to any particular person.

You need barely any information to construct a personally identifiable profile. The fact that you as the user of google analytics can't do it says nothing about googles ability to do it.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/09/your-secrets-live...

Google's spying hurts your users.

To manage your webserver, use your server logs. If you really think you need more information than those convey, you could get some self-hosted javascript to assist with that.

You need nothing else.

> Use your server logs.

That's hardly useful though. Logs are littered with bot traffic, and several users or sessions can be hiding behind a single IP address. Also, you've absolutely no means to track segments of traffic.

Self-hosted javascript is an only vaguely better option. You then need to worry about the infrastructure needed to write the data in a reasonably scalable way as you get larger, and processing the data in a useful manner isn't necessarily something an average Joe can do.

If you need help to deal with your server logs, hire a professional.

By the time you got large enough to have to worry about scaling an infrastructure to deal with your server logs you should either have grown out of the average joe category or have enough revenue to hire a sysadmin.

The whole point of using a solution like google analytics which is free (to a certain extend) is to not have to hire a professional.

There is no way a single sysadmin (how good he think he is) could write the code required for the analytics of a high volume web site (eg. ranked in the top 1000).

Also, without analytics right from the start, I can guarantee you, your web site will never grow, at least certainly not to a high volume web site.

And here the thing that do happen when your web site have a high volume (you know, in real life and not on a fantasy island), even if you reduce your analytics sampling to 10% your web site traffic can still be bigger than the maximum allowed "for free".

So you decide "let's write our own solution" and you assign it to a team of about 5 devs and it take them a good 6 months to finally be able to track data, and then your pointy hairy boss realise he has no nice visual way to read this data (because he want basically the same thing as google analytics).

so tell me again why I/we should not use ga again ?

As mentioned upthread, even a self hosted solution like piwik is blocked by default.

So great to see what we're sacrificing upon the dubious privacy altar...

Server-side log-analysis solutions are not possible to block.

I assume that piwik is running client-side javascript? Then it's in the interest of the client to block it; it's not a server-side solution anymore. Of course with self-hosted js, that's a cat-and-mouse game that the clients can't win anyway, but in the short-term the mouse has won.

Google Analytics is already blocked by multiple ad blockers. Sorry, those users don't care if you want use 3rd party tracking software.

It's unfortunate so many people are downvoting you apparently just because they don't agree. I'm not sure I agree, but you have a totally valid and reasonable point of view.

What really hurts your website is that you rely on google (or any other dominant third party). What visitor care for is good content. Try checking http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/does-my-web-site-suck/

Your user sessions should be short, preferably. If I take a long time to find what I need, you have a badly designed website (or an uninteresting one).

Unless you're trying to make a time-sink website like imgur, that is.

I agree. I understand that people have issues with being retargeted by ad platforms and hate seeing the same ad follow them around, but I don't really seem any downside to users being tracked by 3rd party platforms like Google Analytics. Platforms like GA, don't track first party information and anonymize who you are with a randomly generated ID. This is the only thing that makes your visit unique from the rest. I don't see any harm in providing that information. How do you expect businesses to get insights into what features users like or dislike in their product? I can easily see users of a tool like this complain about a change in one of their favorite products, but by preventing them from any insights how does the business figure that out?

> How do you expect businesses to get insights into what features users like or dislike in their product?

Collect the data you need yourself. If you don't want to do that (it's really easy) then the data can't be that useful/important to you. Another way would be to, you know, ask your users.

What bugs me is that people seem to think it's okay to send my data to another company (usually many, in all kinds of different jurisdictions) without even considering to ask for my consent. That's not nice, is it?

You could ask me, on first visit, if I'm okay with you sending my (anonymous) data set to Google. It's really not that hard, is it? Just ask. But you don't. Not only does nobody do that, I'm pretty sure most people don't even consider doing it. That's the most offensive part.

So what am I left with? I could stop using the WWW all together, I suppose, or, I could block Google Analytics and the likes before hand, and then, if I feel comfortable doing it, opt in to sharing my data because I like your service and I want it to improve.

You and Google don't ask for my consent, but Ghostery does. That's why I (have to) use it.

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bhouston said: "This type of stuff should be opt-in." (blocking GA, that is)

I hope the people reading my comment can appreciate the irony.

[By the way, the hypothetical guy I'm yelling at — not you]

---

One hour later. Can't make this up.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/healthcare.gov-sends-p...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8920294

The reason "nobody does that" is because it's a stupid question that only a tiny minority of people actually care about.

It's like the EU cookie law, the net result of which is that a handful of websites are required to post obnoxious warnings.

Great. Your solution means even more obnoxious warnings internet wide. "Hey, the person running this website wants to see what its users are doing. Allow Y/N?" This is a future I literally cannot wait to see. </s>

Do you really think it's stupid to consider asking a client whether they're okay with you sending their personal data to another company? Just assuming that only a tiny minority of them actually care seems a bit careless.

I don't like the EU cookie law either, but that's a completely different thing. The only thing they do have in common is that they make UX designer's lives a bit harder, but that's really no excuse.

Considering "their personal data" in this case consists of "what you clicked on my website", no, I don't think that should require any special permission.

I think you and I have different definitions of personal data. When I hear that phrase, I think things like addresses, income, contacts, and so forth, but not email or phone numbers (both of which are basically public info), and certainly not what you clicked on my site.

What someone clicks on websites is extremely sensitive private information. Extremely private sensitive matters of peoples' lives is directly observable in the things they click on websites.

> I don't really seem any downside to users being tracked by 3rd party platforms like Google Analytics. Platforms like GA, don't track first party information and anonymize who you are with a randomly generated ID.

But thats not your call to make for your users if they happen to have a different opinion on the topic.

Google is an advertising company. It is not unreasonable to not want to tracked at all by advertising companies. Neither they nor you have any sort of right to this information.

It sucks for you that it is harder to grow your business. But since when has that ever been easy?

How about asking your customers, instead of stalking them by default?

Even telephone hotlines warn you that the calls may be recorded and give you (at least) a way to opt out. No site ever gave me such an option, but my browser has it - so I'm using it indiscriminately.

If you want my trust, give me an (opt in and later opt out) button, limit your tracking as much as you can (time, do not correlate with others, personal info, etc.) and as much information about your tracking as you can and what you use it for. In fact, give me an easy way to see what you have profiled and give me an option to clea(n/r) it.

I guess that sounds like hard work. Maybe Piwik can be extended to provide such things? Does it already do some of that?