Companies must stop using Google Analytics • Hacker News Board

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#51

Post by foepys » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 10:21 AM UTC

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #42

suddenclarity wrote: post #24

This case is about the old Analytics that was replaced with Google Analytics 4 in 2020. So they must stop using a version that Google definitely killed July 1 this year. There are arguments that GA4 would fail the same requirements. Denmark hold that view but it hasn't been tried. Their argument is that a EU-citizen that goes to Asia and visits a site there, will have his information sent to US servers and not EU ser…

The result is the balkanization of the internet, although most folks in the EU want that for nationalistic reasons and to prop up their own industries, under a thin veneer of opposing US imperialism (but being unable to do anything with respect to the things which actually threaten the EU, such as an over dependence on Russia.)

I don't want my data in the hands of the NSA as much as you don't want yours in the hands of the BND, FSB, or the People's Liberation Army.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#52

Post by vntok » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 10:21 AM UTC

gsatic wrote: post #35

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Roll your own" is hubris, unless you have the time, energy, inclination, theoretical knowledge, etc; I wouldn't try and solve solved problems if you can help it. But, host your own is definitely recommended IMO; a lot of the GDPR issues are resolved if you just host your own, because no data is shared to a 3rd party. Then you only need to worry about getting some approval and data retention. I'm sure data retention…

> unless you have the time, energy, inclination, theoretical knowledge Why does anyone need all that?

Because setting up useful analytics for almost any definition of "useful" is not a trivial "I could do this in a WE" project.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#53

Post by switch007 » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 10:22 AM UTC

acatton wrote: post #45

Who needs analytics? I'm confused. When I worked at companies using google analytics, 99.9% of the time they could have gotten this data from server logs with something like awstats or goaccess. To this day, I still don't get what's the point of embedding some javascript to do extra-requests or a tracking pixel, when the data was already given once.

Marketing teams with large budgets.

Not that they actually get questioned properly about actual stats, but they can confidently say they have GA set up and it’s showing some numbers, so just trust us.

Google is “trusted”. Why would the person setting their budget put faith in some hand rolled/open source solution ?! /s

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#54

Post by j-a-a-p » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 10:22 AM UTC

magriz wrote: post #43

j-a-a-p wrote: post #27

> According to the data protection regulation, GDPR, personal data may be transferred to third countries, i.e. countries outside the EU/EEA, if the European Commission has decided that the country in question has an adequate level of protection for personal data that corresponds to that within the EU/EEA. However, the CJEU ruled through the Schrems II ruling that the United States could not be considered to have such…

Thing is, the IP address is also considered personal information (since it can be combined with other data to identify a person), and it is getting transferred with every request. The CJEU ruling about the US is mainly due to the fact that US service providers have to hand over all data if US government agencies request it.

Yes - it is more or less the same. In the EU they have to provide the data to the local authorities as well.

Using any analytics, hosted in US, in the EU or hosting it myself, will involve moving and storing PII.

To be clear, I agree we should keep PII in EU. But I doubt that an EU solution will improve anything for the end user.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#55

Post by oefrha » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 10:22 AM UTC

janus24 wrote: post #39

esalman wrote: post #8

Unrelated: I used ChatGPT to generate remark.js presentation HTML code from some content. It did generate the code, but it inserted a GA snippet along with a random GA account code at the bottom of the code. I did not even catch it immediately (laziness, totally my fault), but noticed it a couple of days later when I was modifying the presentation.

> totally my fault IMHO, it's not totally your fault; private information shouldn't be shared with others. It's your responsibility to verify what ChatGPT is writing before you use it; it's OpenAI's responsibility to not share private information.

Google Analytics tracking ID is public information.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#56

Post by he0001 » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 10:24 AM UTC

poniko wrote: post #13

AbhiAmbad wrote: post #6

why? then what are the alternatives of google analytics. Google is big guient that are collecting all world data. alternative platforms are doing the same. We are not secure anywhere i think. Privacy is already brocken, no options.

Because of the law in US that the governments have right to all data stored on any server that a US company or its subsidiaritets own. That clash with the EU GDPR law and the fact that Sweden categorize IP-adress as a Privacy data point. I.e they can switch to a European vendor that do tracking and analytics.

> the fact that Sweden categorize IP-adress as a Privacy data point

Static IP-adresses are considered identity by EU court[0]. There have been several verdicts where EU court have ruled them subjective to GDPR.

[0] https://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?language=en&num=C-70...

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#57

Post by j-a-a-p » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 10:25 AM UTC

gog wrote: post #47

j-a-a-p wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great for plausible.io of course. But what is the difference for the end user? - GDPR: hosted in EU vs US, so your data is traveling less far. The things the plausible can do with the data is more or less the same. - No cookies: don't see the point of that tbh, they will probably perform even more invasive tricks like finger printing to replace the cookie requirement Bottom line, the website visitors data is still lo…

Plausible can also be self-hosted, unlike GA.

But then you still do the same thing, but you host it yourself. Meaning: it is installed and left running for years without updates and monitoring. I then rather have Google handle things.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#58

Post by darkr » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 10:27 AM UTC

acatton wrote: post #45

Who needs analytics? I'm confused. When I worked at companies using google analytics, 99.9% of the time they could have gotten this data from server logs with something like awstats or goaccess. To this day, I still don't get what's the point of embedding some javascript to do extra-requests or a tracking pixel, when the data was already given once.

It's a problem introduced at least in part by SPAs. When the application runs entirely in the client browser, save for a few API calls (that may be shared between multiple pages) it's difficult to tell which pages are actually being viewed, unless you have the client application report back to you (or to Google)

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#59

Post by pSYoniK » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 10:27 AM UTC

What I am curios about is how much people actually use ALL the analytics information provided by a lot of these tools. I know Matomo and other such open source/self-hostable solutions, but how much info do you really use?

I think for most use cases users would want to know if their content is consumed/read. Maybe how long someone spends on it and where they came from. For this sort of stuff you can write a small script to parse your logs. I did something along these lines to parse Caddy logs to get some idea of how many people visit a link. That's really all I needed and the great part is that I run it whenever I want an update, so it's not consuming resources constantly. The logs are cleared and the output is saved before logs are cleared so I know Article 1 had 39 views (or less!) and Article 2 had 5 views and so on...

So I think we're overdoing it and we would benefit from taking a few minutes before going down the rabbit hole of analyzing EVERYTHING.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#60

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 10:28 AM UTC

pSYoniK wrote: post #59

What I am curios about is how much people actually use ALL the analytics information provided by a lot of these tools. I know Matomo and other such open source/self-hostable solutions, but how much info do you really use? I think for most use cases users would want to know if their content is consumed/read. Maybe how long someone spends on it and where they came from. For this sort of stuff you can write a small scri…

> For this sort of stuff you can write a small script to parse your logs.

IFF you have access to your logs.