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How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

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Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#121

Post by nocturnial »

saagarjha wrote: post #18
thanhhaimai wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I turned off my Windows 10 Telemetry, I expressed a clear choice that I'd rather not give my data, and it's fine for my voice to not be heard. I just really don't care about Windows 10 that much. On the other hand, I turned on all the telemetry for OctoPi, Steam, and a bunch of other softwares I care about. I want my voice to be heard for those cases. Just curious, what's so inexcusable about that?

Because telemetry, by default, subverts consent of what I’d like to share: I may care about feature X and would like you to know I am using it, but I may not trust that you’re not also logging me when I do sensitive operation Y that I might not want to share (or even want to share with you that I used feature X at 10 PM on Friday). Perhaps it would be better if programs let you review telemetry data before you sent i…

I disagree because telemetry collects _your_ data. This means, in an ideal world, if you are pissed off enough about the company collecting it, you would have a chance to alter it and mess up their metrics. Your data => you can and have to right to alter it.

The problem is those companies view it as their data for which you have no right to modify it. Let alone chose to transmit it at all.

Before anyone replies this would invalidate telemetry, ask yourself this question: "If you see a spike in data that makes no sense, isn't that an indication that somehow your data collection policies are pissing off people?"

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#122

Post by soared »

technion wrote: post #6

What's interesting to me about the number of people who block Google analytics, is the number of people working with those analytics in product management, marketing or SEO, that are apparently unaware of anyone being able to block Google Analytics.

Everyone I know who works in digital marketing (a lot of people) use ad block on their personal devices.

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#124

Post by microtonal »

lettergram wrote: post #42
saagarjha wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subverting the desires of people who would like privacy is not a good look.

I mean, on the one hand I can see that view point — On the other hand, that’s a fairly entitled viewpoint. Users are using infrastructure I finance, to do things on the website(s) I created. If you want privacy from the services youre using, create or host your own. I keep the data secure and don’t give it to 3rd parties. That information is used to fix bugs, improve / build services, etc. I’m not “subverting” privac…

On the other hand, that’s a fairly entitled viewpoint.

Users are using infrastructure I finance, to do things on the website(s) I created. If you want privacy from the services youre using, create or host your own.

IANAL, but this is not legal under the GDPR. The GDPR requires op-in. Moreover, you cannot make non-anonymous[1] data collection mandatory to use a product, unless it is necessary for the product to function (in a strict sense).

[1] Anonymous does not seem to include pseudonyms like a random identifier in the GDPR, since pseudonyms could be linked to real identifiers in the future.

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#126

Post by petre »

SquareWheel wrote: post #101
saagarjha wrote: post #3

One of the corollaries to this is that if you are basing your decisions on analytics, you are probably under-representing people who block them, who often tend to be a non-representative subset of your users. I have seen multiple projects do things like stop supporting features that their analytics “showed nobody was using” but failed to realize that a significant portion of their (often technical and very vocal) use…

> “if you wanted your voice to be heard, you should have turned on analytics” It's true though. If you want to be recognized, you can't be incognito. That's like refusing to vote and then complaining about politics.

But the vote is secret. Analytics is not.

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#127

Post by vezycash »

Spooky23 wrote: post #83
jrockway wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 telemetry is pretty scary. I used to do the Windows Insider program, but noticed that they want to collect every website you visit, which seemed a little much to me. Now every week or so Windows complains that I'm not getting insider builds anymore and asks me to reenable the telemetry. The hilarious thing is that I still am getting those builds; when my computer "blue screens" it's green and claims to be…

Office telemetry is worse. There are many cases where your data goes up to Microsoft.

There are many cases where your DOCUMENT is uploaded to Microsoft.

Much clearer.

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#128

Post by ben0x539 »

epidemian wrote: post #75
ben0x539 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd expect serious bots to masquerade as whatever the latest chrome user agent is.

Then you would expect for Chrome to show a higher number of GA blocking "users". But that's not the case: the article mentions that the percentage of users blocking GA on Chrome is on par with Safari. And I don't know what you mean by "serious". The most common crawlers (Google, Baidu, Yandex, etc) identify themselves as bots on the User-Agent very clearly. Personally, those are the ones that I'd call the most "serio…

I meant bots with sufficiently sophisticated adversarial motives (ad fraud? blog comment spam? automated wordpress exploitation?), who I'd expect want to avoid being recognized as such.

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#129

Post by saagarjha »

nocturnial wrote: post #121
saagarjha wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because telemetry, by default, subverts consent of what I’d like to share: I may care about feature X and would like you to know I am using it, but I may not trust that you’re not also logging me when I do sensitive operation Y that I might not want to share (or even want to share with you that I used feature X at 10 PM on Friday). Perhaps it would be better if programs let you review telemetry data before you sent i…

I disagree because telemetry collects _your_ data. This means, in an ideal world, if you are pissed off enough about the company collecting it, you would have a chance to alter it and mess up their metrics. Your data => you can and have to right to alter it. The problem is those companies view it as their data for which you have no right to modify it. Let alone chose to transmit it at all. Before anyone replies this…

> This means, in an ideal world, if you are pissed off enough about the company collecting it, you would have a chance to alter it and mess up their metrics.

I really don't have the time or malice to do this. I can and do move on to something else.

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#130

Post by ben0x539 »

ben0x539 wrote: post #70
jefftk wrote: post #29

This test compares: 1. Number of visitors as recorded in Google Analytics 2. Number of loads of a 1x1 pixel served on a different domain They see higher numbers for (2) than (1), and attribute the difference to users blocking Google Analytics. I don't see them describing how they excluded bot traffic, however, and for my sites the majority of hits I get are from bots. Only some bots run JS, so I suspect their numbers…

Yeah, the numbers in the article are so far off my intuition that I'm happy to latch onto any explanation for why they're weird. Being unable to effectively discount bots seems likely.

I'm reconsidering my intuition in the face of the fact that the sample is from OP's blog and not a customer-facing business.
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