We ditched Google Analytics • Hacker News Board

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#81

Post by MichaelGG » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #44

beerbajay wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google Analytics thrives on developers' laziness in my opinion. It's almost never "developers" who are deciding to use GA; it's middle managers or marketing departments.

Well, it's not a thing to implement in a few days, but a few weeks. That maybe no option...

If you can reimplement GA in a few weeks, you need to do this over December, then enjoy your FU money.

GA is rather deep, with tons of integration and ways to slice and segment data.

Yeah, maybe in a few weeks you can get _something_ that'll give you something that'll make some manager not too unhappy. Seems like a terrible value prop for almost all companies since, unfortunately, approximately no one cares (or they run adblock anyways).

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#82

Post by sarciszewski » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #67

sarciszewski wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recommend Piwik. Using MD5 for passwords in 2015 is beyond irresponsible. https://github.com/piwik/piwik/blob/7f375924db9328f20a0b7cb1... https://github.com/piwik/piwik/blob/6846145992278b52a2a35a8f...

Eh. The analytics data is pretty low value as far as hacker targets, and this can be mostly mitigated anyways by sane segregation of the admin backend from the publicly accessible site. There's an open ticket for it, but it looks like it hasn't been addressed in a while since they don't want to break all existing passwords. https://github.com/piwik/piwik/issues/5728

This is a solved problem.

http://security.stackexchange.com/a/31439/43688

https://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/3lwxlw/hash_and_verify...

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#83

Post by Joona » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #60

Veratyr wrote: post #43

Not strictly on topic so I apologise if this is unwanted but I thought I'd share my experience with SpiderOak in case anyone here was thinking of purchasing one of their plans. In February SpiderOak dropped its pricing to $12/month for 1TB of data. Having several hundred gigabytes of photos to backup I took advantage and bought a year long subscription ($129). I had access to a symmetric gigabit fibre connection so I…

Many of these types of services seem to intentionally cap upload speeds to reduce their potential storage liability (since they're likely over-selling storage to be able to offer 1 TB for $12 with the level of redundancy, staffing costs, etc, needed). I wonder if that is happening in this specific case? Although if it were the case the vendor should still be honest about it. Just saying they limit uploads to 2 Mbps i…

Definitely looks like it to me. Took me a good month to back up my (video) files with CrashPlan, as it was using some 10% of my upload.

I think it would be a good selling point for a service like this to allow higher upload speeds.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#84

Post by andybak » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #45

eponeponepon wrote: post #29

It took us only a few weeks to write our home-brew analytics package. Nothing super fancy yet now we have an internal dashboard that shows the entire company much of what we used analytics for anyway - and with some nice integration with some of our other systems too. I never quite grasp how the above isn't just a matter of intuition to anyone working in the tech sector. Google Analytics thrives on developers' lazine…

> thrives on developers' laziness in my opinion. Frankly most of what i read out of the tech world these days seems to be about pandering to developer laziness. All manner of APIs and services seem to exist in their current form simply to extract rent from developers that don't want to do back end "dirty work".

Laziness is a fine quality to have in a developer: http://threevirtues.com/

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#85

Post by softyeti » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

sghiassy wrote: post #77

I don't get it. SpiderOak states that they dropped GA because it furthers "the erosion of privacy on the web.”, but then they just started tracking in house. How is tracking in house more private than GA? The user is still being tracked.

I believe their point was that they want to track their traffic, but when they use a third party like Google, Google provides tracking services for SpiderOak, Google also tracks you as well, which SpiderOak has no control over.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#86

Post by sparkzilla » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #56

sparkzilla wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robots.txt. I think it's interesting that you say that removing yourself from Google is the same as "disappearing from the web" implying that the web is Google. It's not. Perhaps they should use alternative forms of outreach, something I am considering with my company.

Google is not the web, you are correct; but for all intents and purposes, it's the web's phonebook. You remove yourself from the phonebook, you make it very difficult for people to find you, or your business.

There are other ways to promote a business outside of search engines. The point is you can't say you have "ditched Google" while still being part of their systems that collect user data.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#87

Post by ascorbic » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #67

sarciszewski wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recommend Piwik. Using MD5 for passwords in 2015 is beyond irresponsible. https://github.com/piwik/piwik/blob/7f375924db9328f20a0b7cb1... https://github.com/piwik/piwik/blob/6846145992278b52a2a35a8f...

Eh. The analytics data is pretty low value as far as hacker targets, and this can be mostly mitigated anyways by sane segregation of the admin backend from the publicly accessible site. There's an open ticket for it, but it looks like it hasn't been addressed in a while since they don't want to break all existing passwords. https://github.com/piwik/piwik/issues/5728

A low value target maybe, but having a critical security ticket open for seven years is unforgivable. If they don't want to break compatibility it's pretty simple: use something like PHPass and upgrade the hash when the user next logs in. i.e. what every halfway sensible web app did at least five years ago.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#88

Post by onion2k » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

sarciszewski wrote: post #57

davidroetzel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a look at piwik: http://piwik.org/

I don't recommend Piwik. Using MD5 for passwords in 2015 is beyond irresponsible. https://github.com/piwik/piwik/blob/7f375924db9328f20a0b7cb1... https://github.com/piwik/piwik/blob/6846145992278b52a2a35a8f...

There's a $555 bounty if you can demonstrate a security vulnerability in Piwik because of that.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#89

Post by bluedino » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

Veratyr wrote: post #43

Not strictly on topic so I apologise if this is unwanted but I thought I'd share my experience with SpiderOak in case anyone here was thinking of purchasing one of their plans. In February SpiderOak dropped its pricing to $12/month for 1TB of data. Having several hundred gigabytes of photos to backup I took advantage and bought a year long subscription ($129). I had access to a symmetric gigabit fibre connection so I…

>> my laptop was easily capable of hashing and encrypting the data much faster than the network was capable of handling it

You are assuming that you are the only one using that uplink and that server

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#90

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Dec 08, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #67

sarciszewski wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recommend Piwik. Using MD5 for passwords in 2015 is beyond irresponsible. https://github.com/piwik/piwik/blob/7f375924db9328f20a0b7cb1... https://github.com/piwik/piwik/blob/6846145992278b52a2a35a8f...

Eh. The analytics data is pretty low value as far as hacker targets, and this can be mostly mitigated anyways by sane segregation of the admin backend from the publicly accessible site. There's an open ticket for it, but it looks like it hasn't been addressed in a while since they don't want to break all existing passwords. https://github.com/piwik/piwik/issues/5728

It does not have to break all existing passwords. Just add an envelope for the old passwords.