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Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

simpleanalytics.io

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Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#191

Post by darekkay »

johnnycarcin wrote: post #44
sondr3 wrote: post #17

I've moved away from using any kind of script embedded in my webpages for tracking and instead just use Goaccess ( https://goaccess.io/ ) to analyze my logs. Though there are obvious caveats with this, you need to install it, configure the server logging to match it and so on. But personally the benefits outweighs the cons, it all runs on the server, you are the sole owner off all the data and this tracking doesn't r…

I LOVE Goaccess and highly recommend it as well. My single complaint is the lack of ability to filter/define a date and time range. I know there is an issue for it but last time I checked it had been open for quite some time :(.

There's a kind of a workaround. I rotate my logs with logrotate weekly, so the current week's logs are in access.log (and access.log.1) and past logs are in access.log.x.gz files. Then I run goaccess twice (once for .log and once .gz) to get both "all" and "latest" stats. It's not as flexible as a real filter, but it works for me.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#192

Post by eps »

vassilyk wrote: post #183

I think everyone starts like that. Then, clients that help keeping lights on start asking for this and that. And suddenly you end up providing a service with user level insights, cross-device tracking and advanced behavioral segments powered by ML because why not. GA was simple, before.

GA was also self-hosted (!), back when it was Urchin.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#193

Post by gator-io »

Data collection for legitimate purposes came up in our GDPR compliance review.

This product (https://truestats.com) collects the I.P. address and user agent for the purpose of detecting fraud (not selling data or profiling users). It is used for frequency checking and other patterns that would indicate fraud. We are still going through the legal analysis of how to deal with this, even though we have no idea who the visitors are.

I think considering the I.P. address as PII is a little much if you are not using it in a way that would violate privacy or selling the data.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#195

Post by pvorb »

sharcerer wrote: post #122
LyndsySimon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's value in at least distributing the data that's collected. I may not like that the analytics provider has my data, but it seems like a lesser evil if that provider isn't also the world's largest ad company and they aren't using it to build profiles behind the scenes to track my every move across a significant part of the Internet. Given the choice between a lot of data about me given to a small provide…

Thats no a good way to make a decision. Big,small doesn't matter. What matters is who is providing better security? When 2 parties big,small are collecting data ,then the party which can act on security vulnerabilities quickly and has great security engineers and dedicated teams like Project Zero- is the much better choice. People nowadays assume that a small,indie developer is a good guy. I am just pointing out that…

Better than Google "having great security" would be if Google was not collecting that much information in the first place.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#196

Post by Bjartr »

pdkl95 wrote: post #185
harianus wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good comment! I only store the window.innerWidth metric. I updated the what we collect page ( https://simpleanalytics.io/what-we-collect ) to reflect the IP handling. We don't store them. And fingerprinting is something that would be definitely tracking, not on my watch!

> We don't collect and store IPs. First, "IPs" might be confusing; "IP addresses" would be more accurate. More importantly, you have to collect IP addresses (or any other value in the packet headers[1][2]) - even if you don't store it - if you want to receive any packets from the rest of the internet. Storage of those values is separate issue entirely, and it's good to hear that you are intending to NOT store IP addr…

I would argue that in the conversational context "collect" is more a synonym for "store" than for "receive" or "see". Moreso in the context of a tracking system. In my opinion anyway.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#197

Post by Bjartr »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #150
samirm wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely no reason to collect and store window dimensions, other than for fingerprinting and tracking. Sure it might be an interesting piece of trivia for the dev, but it's not necessary for the dev to "make sure the website works great on all of those dimensions", since that much is already obvious and presumed when making websites these days.

Actually there is, this is one of the most interesting metrics. It doesn't have to be precise though, rounding to nearest 50px would be more than enough. I would argue that height and aspect ratio should be collected too. (I didn't downvote you FWIW)

Heck, "rounding" to desktop/mobile could tell you enough to know what to focus your dev time on.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#199

Post by harianus »

pcmaffey wrote: post #69

Very cool! Was just looking into how to configure GA to not use cookies... Just want to point out for all the front-end devs out there: 12% of traffic to this site atm is coming from screen-width < 375px.

Yes, want to point this out per website. I have websites where there are no mobiles visits, and some with a lot.
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