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Author here. Just to shine some light on the problem we are having and how this solves that problem. We get more and more customers that are required by law to
by AdriaanvRossum 7y ago
Author here. Just to shine some light on the problem we are having and how this solves that problem. We get more and more customers that are required by law to have an active opt-in for cookies and fingerprinting. They basically can't use those techniques before a visitor actually ticks a checkbox (which has to unchecked by default).
This results in a lot of missed data. They can't run Google Analytics for the visitors that don't check this box. For them it's a big issue because they can't see how their visitors are behaving before checking that box.
Simple Analytics wants to fix this issue by not requiring consent. Customers can use our tool for every visitor that lands on their website.
One other thing that is a common misconception is that unique visits with cookies are accurate. They also have flaws:
- What if a user uses a different browser
- What if a user uses a different device
- What if a user blocks (third-party) cookies
The same goes for using IP based fingerprinting. All techniques have flaws. Although they are flawed they are used to get a number. It's not an accurate number but it's a number. That's also the case with using our technique. It's less accurate then using cookies, yes, but it's a number you can use. You can compare it to a previous period, you can see the unique views of a page, etc.
If you don't need to comply with privacy regulations you can use all the tools you want. We just focus on the companies who do care about those regulations and give them the big picture they are now missing.
- digitalengineer 7y ago> They can't run Google Analytics for the visitors that don't check this box I don’t understand. They can. Just anonymize the ip. You can track all their activities. Am I missing something?
- AdriaanvRossum 7y agoGoogle Analytics tracks your visitors with a cookie [1]. You need consent for placing that cookie under the GDPR and other privacy regulations. [1] https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...
- eli 7y agoI don’t think GDPR necessarily says that one must get consent for every cookie.
- tyingq 7y agoGoogle analytics does use first party cookies for the site stats, but it also s̶e̶t̶s̶ [edit] can set a third party DoubleClick cookie that tracks users across sites. So that anonymizing the IP doesn't anonymize the user. There's also optional functionality that can track users via the first party cookie. Passing login id, for example, to GA.
- founderling 7y agoit also sets a third party DoubleClick cookie I have never witnessed that. Can you link to a site that uses only Google Analytics where that happens? Maybe you confused Analytics and Adsense?
- tyingq 7y ago"For customers that are using Google Analytics' Display Advertiser features, such as remarketing, a third-party DoubleClick cookie is used in addition to the other cookies" So, I suppose I should have said "can set", though remarketing is very common. https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...
- founderling 7y agoI would think that enabling the "Display advertisers features" only makes sense for webmasters who also use Google Adsense. And then their visitors get bombarded with all kinds of cookies anyhow. So I don't think it applies to the use case at hand. Where a webmaster wants to implement statistics without violating GDPR.
- codezero 7y agoHave you considered using localStorage? It’s not sent across the wire (I’m sure you know), and as described you’re counting sessions not unique users.
- dabbledash 7y ago“Simple Analytics wants to fix this issue by not requiring consent.” Well that doesn’t sound incredibly sinister or anything.