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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

#91

Post by pdkl95 »

thesimon wrote: post #47
iampims wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t retain the IP address, retain a hash of the IP address.

Not private enough as the space of IP addresses is too small. Removing the last octet of IPv4 addresses before storing them should provide better privacy.

> Removing the last octet of IPv4 addresses before storing them should provide better privacy.

That doesn't provide any practical amount of privacy. For a longer discussion of why this is at best a placebo, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17170468

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

#92

Post by eli »

I think there are a lot of misconceptions about how Google Analytics tracking works. I'm pretty sure a vanilla GA setup does not, in fact, create profiles that track you across the web. For one thing, all the cookies it creates are first-party (on your domain).

I still get objecting to Google products on principle, but their privacy policy for GA seems pretty reasonable to me: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245

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

#93

Post by stephenr »

I don't doubt your intentions, but I simply don't believe that any kind of user analytics as-a-service is ever going to be good enough privacy wise.

Do you know what isn't creepy and privacy invading? Analysing the attributes of the visitors to FranksKebabShop.com, as part of the tooling that runs FranksKebabShop.com.

This could be analysing web server/cache logs. It could be a more active piece of software that operates via JS and reports back to a service running on the same domain.

I know, I know "everything is SaaS now, nobody installs software". Nobody can install it if you don't make it installable. Be part of the solution not part of the problem.

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

#95

Post by alkonaut »

sleepyhead wrote: post #58

"We don't use cookies or collect any personal data." IP-address is considered personal data. So when the browsers visits a page with the JS, the IP-address of the user is transferred to your server. So that means the website I am visiting is sharing my IP-address with a third-party (you).

Would it make a difference If the information was anonymized /hashed?

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

#96

Post by dylz »

AdriaanvRossum wrote: post #2

Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that. So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entir…

How can I run this myself?

It absolutely isn't privacy-first if it requires running on someone else's machine and giving your users' data to them - another issue would be that while your server is in the EU, the hosting company is subject to US law, and all the stuff that comes with it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act f.e.)

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

#97

Post by snaky »

stephenr wrote: post #93

I don't doubt your intentions, but I simply don't believe that any kind of user analytics as-a-service is ever going to be good enough privacy wise. Do you know what isn't creepy and privacy invading? Analysing the attributes of the visitors to FranksKebabShop.com, as part of the tooling that runs FranksKebabShop.com. This could be analysing web server/cache logs. It could be a more active piece of software that oper…

> No plans to go open source with the backend

That's the main problem I suppose.

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

#98

Post by jon-wood »

tootie wrote: post #49
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…

This is how we did web analytics in the old days. The original WebTrends was just a log analyzer for apache.

So was the original Google Analytics, back when it was still called Urchin.

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

#100

Post by stephenr »

snaky wrote: post #97
stephenr wrote: post #93

I don't doubt your intentions, but I simply don't believe that any kind of user analytics as-a-service is ever going to be good enough privacy wise. Do you know what isn't creepy and privacy invading? Analysing the attributes of the visitors to FranksKebabShop.com, as part of the tooling that runs FranksKebabShop.com. This could be analysing web server/cache logs. It could be a more active piece of software that oper…

> No plans to go open source with the backend That's the main problem I suppose.

Installable doesn't necessarily mean open source.

I personally wouldn't use one that isn't OSS, but plenty of people don't care about that, but do care about privacy, including the privacy of their site visitors.

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