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You can talk to the Google Analytics API directly and control exactly what is sent to Google's servers. This also allows to create custom identifiers for users
by nwellnhof 6y ago
You can talk to the Google Analytics API directly and control exactly what is sent to Google's servers. This also allows to create custom identifiers for users or sessions, or to track no personally identifiable information at all. A good starting point is Minimal Analytics which also removes lots of unnecessary bloat:
https://minimalanalytics.com/ https://minimalanalytics.com/
- XCSme 6y agoThat's cool! Isn't the client-side request to `www.google-analytics.com` enough for Google to track users between sessions and domains?
- Nextgrid 6y agoYes definitely. They collect the IP address and a browser fingerprint at the very least. I'm not sure if this is doable by proxying through the server, so only custom events (with an unrelated IP - the server's one) are sent.
- nwellnhof 6y agoGoogle Analytics never uses browser fingerprints. The default tracking scripts only use first-party cookies. If you call the GA API directly, you don't even need cookies or local storage. This will make some of the reports meaningless, of course. The user's IP address is obviously sent, but it can be truncated by setting an option.
- Nextgrid 6y ago> The user's IP address is obviously sent, but it can be truncated by setting an option. The IP address is inherently sent due to how the internet operates (unless you proxy GA calls through your server, which I'm not sure is even possible). The option to "truncate" the IP address just tells Google you don't want to store it for your analytics. It has no effect on whether Google still keeps it on their side for their own benefit.