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Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

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Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#71

Post by jka »

pixelbath wrote: post #67

I see a lot of suggestions for free or open-source analytics packages, but I would refrain from recommending anything you haven't personally used. I've tried to separate myself from Google in various ways, and one of those was to replace Google Analytics with open source software. I tried several; they're all either non-functional out of the box, or require significant time investment to even start approaching Google…

Please also bear in mind that any developer's personal time (whether your own or someone else's), while important and valuable - is also a trade-off against the aggregated time and value of your users' privacy.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#72

Post by jka »

falcolas wrote: post #64
jka wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the long term it's possible that maximizing shareholder value requires monetization of additional resources. The approach of 'today, company X is known to make money via Y, so we can trust them with private data' only works until that data becomes valuable enough for the company to invest in extracting.

Monetizing data stored in AWS would destroy their credibility with corporations, who are much more proactive in protecting themselves (both legally and with their wallets) than consumers are.

Upvoted, and I don't disagree with your premise - we'll see how this plays out over the long term.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#73

Post by gramakri »

rapnie wrote: post #9
coldcode wrote: post #6

It would be handy if people listed here all the alternatives that don't steal your customer info.

https://usefathom.com/ https://goaccess.io/ https://github.com/NYPL/google-analytics-proxy http://matomo.org/ https://ackee.electerious.com/ https://www.goatcounter.com/ https://count.ly/

I gave many of these a visit.

fathom - Looks great. I am OK with closed source products (my motivation is self-hosting/privacy) but the direction is not clear to me. Maybe they will have a blog about it at some point - https://github.com/usefathom/fathom/issues/268. Having multiple code bases is going to be super hard.

goaccess.io - this analyses web logs

google-analytics-proxy - project is dead

matomo - this is what i use now and it works great. has a lot of quirks but if you spend some time, you can make it work.

ackee, goatcounter - simple but looks like this does not track users/sessions. it's mostly for page hits.

countly - looks good if you are enterprise. there is no pricing :(

freshlytics (from another thread) - page says it's in beta and not production ready

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#74

Post by falcolas »

jka wrote: post #72
falcolas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monetizing data stored in AWS would destroy their credibility with corporations, who are much more proactive in protecting themselves (both legally and with their wallets) than consumers are.

Upvoted, and I don't disagree with your premise - we'll see how this plays out over the long term.

Well, AWS launched 13 years ago, and so far so good. It's no IBM, but it is a track record to consider.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#75

Post by alharith »

falcolas wrote: post #66
Nullabillity wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People said the same about Apple, and then it turned out to be bullshit.[0] And, big surprise, their customers did not seem to hold them accountable. So in the end, paying for stuff just shows that you're a more valuable product to sell. And gives them a great primary key to track you by. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22106536

I've said this to most naysayers, but AWS aims itself at businesses, who are much more forward with their pocketbook and lawyers in protecting their privacy. AWS can't safely market data stored in their systems without running the risk of being abandoned and sued into oblivion. Even Google doesn't dare monetize data stored in their enterprise customer's databases. EDIT: Failing to offer a privacy-enhancing feature, a…

Google doesn't dare directly monetize data stored in their customer's databases. There's zero doubt in my mind they are piping everything somewhere, completely anonymized, and feeding their models.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#76

Post by Carpetsmoker »

gramakri wrote: post #73
rapnie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://usefathom.com/ https://goaccess.io/ https://github.com/NYPL/google-analytics-proxy http://matomo.org/ https://ackee.electerious.com/ https://www.goatcounter.com/ https://count.ly/

I gave many of these a visit. fathom - Looks great. I am OK with closed source products (my motivation is self-hosting/privacy) but the direction is not clear to me. Maybe they will have a blog about it at some point - https://github.com/usefathom/fathom/issues/268 . Having multiple code bases is going to be super hard. goaccess.io - this analyses web logs google-analytics-proxy - project is dead matomo - this is wha…

GoatCounter author here: doing some form of session tracking is on the roadmap; check back in a few months. The project is still quite new, with the first "real" release only being last week :-)

As for Fathom, I find that last "since that people are confused"-comment rather funny, since their messaging on this has been confused for almost a year, haha

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#77

Post by Carpetsmoker »

protonfish wrote: post #28
coldcode wrote: post #6

It would be handy if people listed here all the alternatives that don't steal your customer info.

Or just use server log analytics. Client-side analytics are a significant contributor to the proliferation of JavaScript bloat and unnecessary 3rd party cookies.

Depending on which solution you use; some of them are just a few KB, which is not so much.

Doing log-analysis has its own drawbacks: not everyone has access to them, bot traffic will be a lot higher, and certain information is hard to access (like screen size). You can't always "just" use it.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#78

Post by Carpetsmoker »

awb wrote: post #33
protonfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just use server log analytics. Client-side analytics are a significant contributor to the proliferation of JavaScript bloat and unnecessary 3rd party cookies.

Agreed if you're already self-hosting. However, I don't know of a JS-free solution if you're hosting on a 3rd party like GitHub pages or Netlify for example. (Netlify does sell access to log data but it looks expensive for most hobby / personal sites)

You can probably use the "tracking pixel" method with at least some analytics tools. This is a very old which probably predates even the invention of JavaScript.

Basically, if it accepts a GET with query parameters, it should work.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#79

Post by davidarkemp2 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #35
benbristow wrote: post #27

Interesting that the page breaks if you're using Adblock because of Google Analytics being in the URL. Shows me a fun 'You are not connected to the internet' page that lets you doodle on the page.

Not on Firefox with uBlock Origin.

I'd check your filters - EasyPrivacy has -google-analytics- blocked in the URL

I got to it by adding the following filter

    @@||dev.to/goatandsheep/stop-donating-your-customers-data-to-google-analytics-191?i=i$xhr,1p

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#80

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

pixelbath wrote: post #67

I see a lot of suggestions for free or open-source analytics packages, but I would refrain from recommending anything you haven't personally used. I've tried to separate myself from Google in various ways, and one of those was to replace Google Analytics with open source software. I tried several; they're all either non-functional out of the box, or require significant time investment to even start approaching Google…

I’ve used Piwik (Matomo) and the open source version seems to work pretty well, but I’ve never had any particularly sophisticated use cases.
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