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

Post by dzader » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

LyndsySimon wrote: post #134

sharcerer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I totally agree on the security aspect, but I think we're talking about different threat models. Security matters if your concern is the data leaking to a potential malicious actor. The concern that I'm speaking to is the intended use of the data. Google is definitely going to use it for ad targeting and building a "shadow profile", but a small developer probably won't. This one says they won't, but even if they do t…

Post by samirm » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:32 PM UTC

markbnj wrote: post #149

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.

Could there not be value in knowing how many pixels your users have available to view your things? You could presumably get that information from device characteristics but then could also presumably use that for fingerprinting.

Post by eli » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:33 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #132

eli wrote: post #92

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/ans…

Google doesn't need cookies. They can profile your browser and check the source IP to track you around the web. Given that Google's business is information, it seems unlikely that they aren't doing this very easy form of tracking.

Post by boernard » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

ucarion wrote: post #123

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…

First off: hats off for making a product that takes the rights of the end user seriously! However, I am a bit confused as to who would want this product. The sort of questions this product answers seem quite limited: 1. What URLs are getting lots of hits? 2. What referrers are generating lots of hits? 3. What screen sizes are those hits coming from? What decisions can be drawn from those questions? This seems useful…

Post by harrisreynolds » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

fiatjaf wrote: post #119

This feels like a rant, but I've posted my https://trackingco.de/ here multiple times, which has very similar proposal (and is cheaper) but never got a single line of feedback.