13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics • Hacker News Board

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#21

Post by fuzzy2 » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:31 AM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #8

I am not surprised by the low iOS numbers, adblockers are a pain to setup and I haven’t found one as good as ublock origin. Would anyone have recommendation for a good iOS adblocker?

You install the blocker and that’s it. I don’t see how it can get any easier than that. At least with Safari, you can officially have ad blocking. :D

I use Adguard. It has a customized combination of the blocking lists you know from desktop browsers. Trust doesn’t really matter all that much—the blocker cannot see what you’re doing in the browser.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#22

Post by pachico » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:34 AM UTC

Only 13%? According to some independent sources, up to 30% (and in some countries 40%) of Europeans use adblockers. If you're interested, I can try to find out the sources. This is why I use my own tracking system.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#23

Post by drukenemo » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:35 AM UTC

pachico wrote: post #22

Only 13%? According to some independent sources, up to 30% (and in some countries 40%) of Europeans use adblockers. If you're interested, I can try to find out the sources. This is why I use my own tracking system.

Can you please tell the sources? I would be interested in reading more about this.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#24

Post by smilespray » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:35 AM UTC

pachico wrote: post #22

Only 13%? According to some independent sources, up to 30% (and in some countries 40%) of Europeans use adblockers. If you're interested, I can try to find out the sources. This is why I use my own tracking system.

Ad blocking and tracker blocking sometimes, but clearly not always, overlaps.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#25

Post by abofh » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:36 AM UTC

__alexs wrote: post #20

Slightly off topic: Plausible claim that their cookieless tracking is GDPR compliant but this seems a bit shaky to me. Unless they are doing something that isn't specified in their docs their fingerprinting seems reversible which would make their user identifiers PII like any session ID you'd store in a cookie. AIUI the GDPR doesn't particularly care about cookies, it cares about you tracking people without their con…

Correct, the rulings to date have generally involved cookies, but it's the act, not the tool.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#26

Post by drukenemo » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:36 AM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #8

I am not surprised by the low iOS numbers, adblockers are a pain to setup and I haven’t found one as good as ublock origin. Would anyone have recommendation for a good iOS adblocker?

Pi-Hole at home, NextDNS on the go. That’s my setup.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#27

Post by frankjr » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:37 AM UTC

> Safari was a big surprise to me. With all the marketing Apple does focused on privacy and with them even highlighting Google Analytics as being blocked, I was expecting numbers closer to Firefox.

Safari does not block anything (not even in the upcoming release) - it will still happily load all of the tracking and fingerprinting JS. All it does is prevent some information from being sent back (3rd party cookies, stripped referrer etc.) but the requests are still being made and received code executed.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#28

Post by yomly » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:37 AM UTC

karxxm wrote: post #7

onion2k wrote: post #4

None of my website users need to block Google Analytics.

Mine either. They also don't have to worry about Facebook analyzing click behavior via the SDK.

Sigh - the number of websites which were broken when browsing the internet from China because trackers from Facebook were not wrapped in exception handling and the endpoints were blocked.

Literally couldn't give the companies business.

/rage

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#29

Post by iamacyborg » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:37 AM UTC

__alexs wrote: post #20

Slightly off topic: Plausible claim that their cookieless tracking is GDPR compliant but this seems a bit shaky to me. Unless they are doing something that isn't specified in their docs their fingerprinting seems reversible which would make their user identifiers PII like any session ID you'd store in a cookie. AIUI the GDPR doesn't particularly care about cookies, it cares about you tracking people without their con…

GDPR doesn't care about tracking, it's about data processing. How cookies are handled in a compliant manner is handled under something like PECR (in the UK at least).

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-pecr/guidance-...

If data is being processed without containing PII, then GDPR becomes a non-issue.

/edit

My bad, because this tool uses cookies it does in fact require consent if it's to be used in a properly GDPR compliant manner.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#30

Post by pmontra » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:38 AM UTC

__alexs wrote: post #20

Slightly off topic: Plausible claim that their cookieless tracking is GDPR compliant but this seems a bit shaky to me. Unless they are doing something that isn't specified in their docs their fingerprinting seems reversible which would make their user identifiers PII like any session ID you'd store in a cookie. AIUI the GDPR doesn't particularly care about cookies, it cares about you tracking people without their con…

Yes. GDPR is about collection and processing of personal information. How you collect them is not important. HTTP cookies or fingerprinting and successive deanonimization is the same as getting the name and address with a form on paper. You need consent.