7 ms·

Free, Privacy-First Analytics for a Better Web

72 points by jgrahamc 6y ago

judge2020 6y ago
The big kicker here is that they'll be providing these to those who don't use CF by adding JS to the page, almost exactly like Google Analytics (although I imagine you wouldn't get the accuracy of also having server/access log-based analytics due to ad blockers) by signing up on this page: https://www.cloudflare.com/web-analytics/ https://www.cloudflare.com/web-analytics/
- deepstack 6y ago
  offer something that is privacy-first analytics ought to be a pixel embed. Why would I trust an external js source that could change introduce security risk?
  - prophesi 6y ago
    I'm not too familiar with the technique; doesn't pixel tracking still require JS to derive more info from the visitor beyond just their IP address?
    - shakna 6y ago
      The GET request will generally also include the User Agent, and any forwarded headers. This can include cookies.
      - tomschlick 6y ago
        Yes but that doesn't include things like screen size/ratio or some other key metrics that usability people rely on. I can see the need for JS but it would be nice if they offered a pixel only version with less granularity for those of us who want the data but without JS.
        shakna 6y ago
        Those things violate the privacy-first principles, do they not? Things like screen size/ratio are very strong fingerprints that can be used to de-anonymise users with ease.
        deepstack 6y ago
        Exactly! I think most people don't realize the problem of browsing web with JS turned on.
  - yencabulator 6y ago
    Their concept of "visit" hinges on seeing the Referer for the original request.
jeremiahlee 6y ago
Will Cloudflare customers on the free tier get non-JS Web Traffic Analytics? The blog post only mentions Pro+ tier accounts and non-Cloudflare customers.
- jeremiahlee 6y ago
  Answer from Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince: "Yes. There are more features with higher tiers, but every tier including free gets upgraded analytics." https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1310958621136760832 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1310958621136760832
huhtenberg 6y ago
"Privacy-first", "For a Better Web" ... oh, the irony. blog.cloudfare.com external dependencies: cloudflare.com blog.cloudflare.com akamai.net akamaiedge.net bizible.com bizibly.com cloudflare.net disqus.com disqus.map.fastlylb.net disquscdn.com edgecastcdn.net facebook.net fastly.net google.com googleoptimize.com googletagmanager.com kappacdn.net lambdacdn.net linkedin.com marketo.com marketo.net mktoedge.com mktoresp.com storage.googleapi Excellent, just excellent.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- judge2020 6y ago
  disqus is horrible, wish they replaced it with a discourse-based (community.cloudflare.com) comments system that some other have done[0,1]. 0: https://blog.codinghorror.com/welcome-to-the-internet-of-compromised-things/#discourse-comments https://blog.codinghorror.com/welcome-to-the-internet-of-com... 1: https://meta.discourse.org/t/embedding-discourse-comments-via-javascript/31963?u=judge https://meta.discourse.org/t/embedding-discourse-comments-vi...
  - pier25 6y ago
    I thought about doing something similar but instead using Reddit or HN.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  As far as the actual analytics product, is it provided via servers with specific domains? What would one look for if one wanted to block them?
  - manigandham 6y ago
    The main product is powered by server logs from Cloudflare. You can't block them for any site using Cloudflare as a CDN/reverse proxy.
Reelin 6y ago
> Everyone with a website needs to know some basic facts about their website: ... What other sites sent traffic to my website? No. If this product is capable of collecting that sort of data in the first place then it's not privacy first as far as I'm concerned. > ... we don’t “fingerprint” individuals via their IP address ... That _can't_ be true. How else would a single "visit" (their terminology) be tracked? A self-hosted analytics solution (ex: https://github.com/mikecao/umami https://github.com/mikecao/umami) would allow you to actually preserve user privacy if you wanted to.
- xPaw 6y ago
  > If this product is capable of collecting that sort of data in the first place It's based solely on the http referer, which your browser sends.
  - Reelin 6y ago
    The post specifies that the referrer is used for computing their "visit" metric (for which IP would also obviously be needed). It doesn't specify how their service is determining the site you came from. Since they don't say, my assumption is that they're correlating data obtained in some other way because that seems to be par for the course at this point. Note that referrers are self reported, so there's an incentive for such a service to avoid relying on them. Each web site can set its own desired referrer policy, and users can further configure when, if, and how their browser sends referrers. (For example, Firefox has referer.XOriginPolicy and referer.spoofSource among other preferences.)
    - xPaw 6y ago
      Referer includes the site you came from, what am I missing? > Each web site can set its own desired referrer policy Yes, and it won't be able to tell which site you come from if it's set to no-referer.
      - Reelin 6y ago
        > Referer includes the site you came from, what am I missing? I never claimed otherwise? There are two separate metrics in question here. One is the "visit" metric which the post specifies is based on the referrer. The other is quantifying which other sites sent traffic your way. The post conspicuously fails to define how that second metric is computed. For that second metric, I noted that there is an obvious incentive to avoid using the referrer and that the current status quo is to rely on other methods. (In particular, fingerprinting combined with centralized analytics services that have vision into a vast amount of traffic. Note that Cloudflare easily qualifies here given the sheer number of assets and websites they host.) If the entirety of this analytics service is based solely on referrers coupled with IP addresses then the author should unambiguously state that up front. Otherwise I'm going to assume the worst for the reasons given above.
fsflover 6y ago
Actually privacy-first analytics: https://matomo.org/ https://matomo.org/.
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
love & respect cloudflare but calling this 'web analytics' blurs meaning and it's hardly a threat to google. It's web traffic stats, hit data they have lying around from ops they're running anyways, packaged in a nice interface. Same as any web stats package from 2001. Google Analytics spins it out more into like 'business analytics' where ('privacy' aside) you can see how users are using your site and how you can improve things for them and work to do things like make conversions for whatever your goal is, selling or otherwise. As far as designing for web and experience, that is useful.
- warpspin 6y ago
  Exactly. Recently complained about the same with other "analytics" packages pushed on HN. If you cannot get actionable results from an analytics package, it's only a 90ies visitor counter in disguise with some fancy graphics. Some of the stuff which is important for analytics can ONLY be tracked via JavaScript. Truly privacy friendly, preferrably self hosted analytics, is possible, though. Matomo finally is "there", though, with funnels, form analytics and the like, though of course, you can easily cross the line there, too, and then mainly gained decentralization, but not truly privacy.
gtf21 6y ago
I quite like the edge approach (i.e. doing this via server-side logs rather than by adding a script to the client). I already do this with my own website using an ELK stack to ingest and visualies the nginx logs, but I have been wondering if there's a better (and lighter ^1) solution that's specifically focussed on privacy-aware, server-side analytics. 1. I had to increase the RAM on my droplet just to get the ELK container to boot.
XCSme 6y ago
I think self-hosting is the only way to avoid all the privacy issues created by centralized analytics. Plug: I am currently working on https://www.usertrack.net https://www.usertrack.net to try to offer self-hosted actionable analytics, and I'm also developing a more lightweight and cheaper version for WordPress, as currently most WP analytics plugin are just fetching and sending data to Google Analytics.

72 points by jgrahamc 6y ago

judge2020 6y ago

The big kicker here is that they'll be providing these to those who don't use CF by adding JS to the page, almost exactly like Google Analytics (although I imagine you wouldn't get the accuracy of also having server/access log-based analytics due to ad blockers) by signing up on this page: https://www.cloudflare.com/web-analytics/ https://www.cloudflare.com/web-analytics/

deepstack 6y ago
offer something that is privacy-first analytics ought to be a pixel embed. Why would I trust an external js source that could change introduce security risk?
- prophesi 6y ago
  I'm not too familiar with the technique; doesn't pixel tracking still require JS to derive more info from the visitor beyond just their IP address?
  - shakna 6y ago
    The GET request will generally also include the User Agent, and any forwarded headers. This can include cookies.
    - tomschlick 6y ago
      Yes but that doesn't include things like screen size/ratio or some other key metrics that usability people rely on. I can see the need for JS but it would be nice if they offered a pixel only version with less granularity for those of us who want the data but without JS.
      - shakna 6y ago
        Those things violate the privacy-first principles, do they not? Things like screen size/ratio are very strong fingerprints that can be used to de-anonymise users with ease.
        deepstack 6y ago
        Exactly! I think most people don't realize the problem of browsing web with JS turned on.
- yencabulator 6y ago
  Their concept of "visit" hinges on seeing the Referer for the original request.

jeremiahlee 6y ago

Will Cloudflare customers on the free tier get non-JS Web Traffic Analytics? The blog post only mentions Pro+ tier accounts and non-Cloudflare customers.

jeremiahlee 6y ago
Answer from Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince: "Yes. There are more features with higher tiers, but every tier including free gets upgraded analytics." https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1310958621136760832 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1310958621136760832

huhtenberg 6y ago

"Privacy-first", "For a Better Web" ... oh, the irony. blog.cloudfare.com external dependencies: cloudflare.com blog.cloudflare.com akamai.net akamaiedge.net bizible.com bizibly.com cloudflare.net disqus.com disqus.map.fastlylb.net disquscdn.com edgecastcdn.net facebook.net fastly.net google.com googleoptimize.com googletagmanager.com kappacdn.net lambdacdn.net linkedin.com marketo.com marketo.net mktoedge.com mktoresp.com storage.googleapi Excellent, just excellent.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
judge2020 6y ago
disqus is horrible, wish they replaced it with a discourse-based (community.cloudflare.com) comments system that some other have done[0,1]. 0: https://blog.codinghorror.com/welcome-to-the-internet-of-compromised-things/#discourse-comments https://blog.codinghorror.com/welcome-to-the-internet-of-com... 1: https://meta.discourse.org/t/embedding-discourse-comments-via-javascript/31963?u=judge https://meta.discourse.org/t/embedding-discourse-comments-vi...
- pier25 6y ago
  I thought about doing something similar but instead using Reddit or HN.
uniqueid 6y ago
As far as the actual analytics product, is it provided via servers with specific domains? What would one look for if one wanted to block them?
- manigandham 6y ago
  The main product is powered by server logs from Cloudflare. You can't block them for any site using Cloudflare as a CDN/reverse proxy.

Reelin 6y ago

> Everyone with a website needs to know some basic facts about their website: ... What other sites sent traffic to my website? No. If this product is capable of collecting that sort of data in the first place then it's not privacy first as far as I'm concerned. > ... we don’t “fingerprint” individuals via their IP address ... That _can't_ be true. How else would a single "visit" (their terminology) be tracked? A self-hosted analytics solution (ex: https://github.com/mikecao/umami https://github.com/mikecao/umami) would allow you to actually preserve user privacy if you wanted to.

xPaw 6y ago
> If this product is capable of collecting that sort of data in the first place It's based solely on the http referer, which your browser sends.
- Reelin 6y ago
  The post specifies that the referrer is used for computing their "visit" metric (for which IP would also obviously be needed). It doesn't specify how their service is determining the site you came from. Since they don't say, my assumption is that they're correlating data obtained in some other way because that seems to be par for the course at this point. Note that referrers are self reported, so there's an incentive for such a service to avoid relying on them. Each web site can set its own desired referrer policy, and users can further configure when, if, and how their browser sends referrers. (For example, Firefox has referer.XOriginPolicy and referer.spoofSource among other preferences.)
  - xPaw 6y ago
    Referer includes the site you came from, what am I missing? > Each web site can set its own desired referrer policy Yes, and it won't be able to tell which site you come from if it's set to no-referer.
    - Reelin 6y ago
      > Referer includes the site you came from, what am I missing? I never claimed otherwise? There are two separate metrics in question here. One is the "visit" metric which the post specifies is based on the referrer. The other is quantifying which other sites sent traffic your way. The post conspicuously fails to define how that second metric is computed. For that second metric, I noted that there is an obvious incentive to avoid using the referrer and that the current status quo is to rely on other methods. (In particular, fingerprinting combined with centralized analytics services that have vision into a vast amount of traffic. Note that Cloudflare easily qualifies here given the sheer number of assets and websites they host.) If the entirety of this analytics service is based solely on referrers coupled with IP addresses then the author should unambiguously state that up front. Otherwise I'm going to assume the worst for the reasons given above.

fsflover 6y ago

Actually privacy-first analytics: https://matomo.org/ https://matomo.org/.

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

love & respect cloudflare but calling this 'web analytics' blurs meaning and it's hardly a threat to google. It's web traffic stats, hit data they have lying around from ops they're running anyways, packaged in a nice interface. Same as any web stats package from 2001. Google Analytics spins it out more into like 'business analytics' where ('privacy' aside) you can see how users are using your site and how you can improve things for them and work to do things like make conversions for whatever your goal is, selling or otherwise. As far as designing for web and experience, that is useful.

warpspin 6y ago
Exactly. Recently complained about the same with other "analytics" packages pushed on HN. If you cannot get actionable results from an analytics package, it's only a 90ies visitor counter in disguise with some fancy graphics. Some of the stuff which is important for analytics can ONLY be tracked via JavaScript. Truly privacy friendly, preferrably self hosted analytics, is possible, though. Matomo finally is "there", though, with funnels, form analytics and the like, though of course, you can easily cross the line there, too, and then mainly gained decentralization, but not truly privacy.

gtf21 6y ago

I quite like the edge approach (i.e. doing this via server-side logs rather than by adding a script to the client). I already do this with my own website using an ELK stack to ingest and visualies the nginx logs, but I have been wondering if there's a better (and lighter ^1) solution that's specifically focussed on privacy-aware, server-side analytics. 1. I had to increase the RAM on my droplet just to get the ELK container to boot.

XCSme 6y ago

I think self-hosting is the only way to avoid all the privacy issues created by centralized analytics. Plug: I am currently working on https://www.usertrack.net https://www.usertrack.net to try to offer self-hosted actionable analytics, and I'm also developing a more lightweight and cheaper version for WordPress, as currently most WP analytics plugin are just fetching and sending data to Google Analytics.