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Looked for a few minutes and couldn't find the full answer. How does Plausible calculate unique users if it can't store some type of identifier on the page? I

Looked for a few minutes and couldn't find the full answer. How does Plausible calculate unique users if it can't store some type of identifier on the page? I see this... "We do not generate any persistent identifiers either. We generate a random string of letters and numbers that is used to calculate unique visitors on a website and we reset this string once per day." But where is that ID stored?

colejohnson66 6y ago
I’m guessing a cookie with an expiration of 24 hours, but I could be wrong
marvinblum 6y ago
Probably like we do it for pirsch.io, by calculating a hashed fingerprint and throwing away the individual page hits once per day: https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch
- tuna-piano 6y ago
  Seems like a good method and actually more accurate than they do... seems like they just do a hash of IP.
  - marvinblum 6y ago
    Hmm I think I've read something about it elsewhere and they also use more parameters than just the IP. Not sure.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  What's the privacy benefit over storing a tracking cookie with expiry of a day? If at all, random cookie seems better for privacy as in your case if someone really wants it, they can recover the IP if the user agent is not rare by searching for all IP(4 billion IPv4), User-Agent(100 for popular browsers), the date(1 day as date is stored separately), and a salt(known to server), easily within reach of anyone.
  - marvinblum 6y ago
    It doesn't use cookies. Fingerprints are calculated on each page hit. The salt must be treated like a password to make sure it's not that easy to brute force it and no one should get access to your database of course ;) It's not the strongest anonymization, but good enough considering that the hits will be deleted once a day by batch processing.
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
> How can Plausible Analytics count unique visitors without cookies? > So if you don’t use cookies how do you count the number of website visitors and report on metrics such as the number of unique users? > Instead of tagging users with cookies, we count the number of unique IP addresses that accessed your website. Counting IP addresses is an old-school method that was used before the modern age of JavaScript snippets and tracking cookies. > Since IP addresses are considered personal data under GDPR, we anonymize them using a one-way cryptographic hash function. This generates a random string of letters and numbers that is used to calculate unique visitor numbers for the day. Old salts are deleted to avoid the possibility of linking visitor information from one day to the next. We never store IP addresses in our database or logs. ... > In our testing, using IP addresses to count visitors is remarkably accurate when compared to using a cookie. Total unique visitor counts were within 10% error range with IP-based counting usually showing lower numbers. From here: https://plausible.io/blog/google-analytics-cookies#can-you-get-web-analytics-without-cookies https://plausible.io/blog/google-analytics-cookies#can-you-g...
- mh- 6y ago
  This would be woefully inaccurate for websites with a large amount of mobile traffic (because of CGNAT), or university traffic, or etc.
  - icefo 6y ago
    Don't universities have a huge number of IPs because they were the first to use internet ? Mine gives one public ipv4 per device that access the internet on the network (with some exceptions). Strategies varies but if you have a lot of addresses why not use them.
    - jannes 6y ago
      That might be true for some US universities, but it's definitely not true for the rest of the world.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
markosaric 6y ago
you can see the exact method on our data policy: https://plausible.io/data-policy https://plausible.io/data-policy

colejohnson66 6y ago

I’m guessing a cookie with an expiration of 24 hours, but I could be wrong

marvinblum 6y ago

Probably like we do it for pirsch.io, by calculating a hashed fingerprint and throwing away the individual page hits once per day: https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch

tuna-piano 6y ago
Seems like a good method and actually more accurate than they do... seems like they just do a hash of IP.
- marvinblum 6y ago
  Hmm I think I've read something about it elsewhere and they also use more parameters than just the IP. Not sure.
YetAnotherNick 6y ago
What's the privacy benefit over storing a tracking cookie with expiry of a day? If at all, random cookie seems better for privacy as in your case if someone really wants it, they can recover the IP if the user agent is not rare by searching for all IP(4 billion IPv4), User-Agent(100 for popular browsers), the date(1 day as date is stored separately), and a salt(known to server), easily within reach of anyone.
- marvinblum 6y ago
  It doesn't use cookies. Fingerprints are calculated on each page hit. The salt must be treated like a password to make sure it's not that easy to brute force it and no one should get access to your database of course ;) It's not the strongest anonymization, but good enough considering that the hits will be deleted once a day by batch processing.

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

> How can Plausible Analytics count unique visitors without cookies? > So if you don’t use cookies how do you count the number of website visitors and report on metrics such as the number of unique users? > Instead of tagging users with cookies, we count the number of unique IP addresses that accessed your website. Counting IP addresses is an old-school method that was used before the modern age of JavaScript snippets and tracking cookies. > Since IP addresses are considered personal data under GDPR, we anonymize them using a one-way cryptographic hash function. This generates a random string of letters and numbers that is used to calculate unique visitor numbers for the day. Old salts are deleted to avoid the possibility of linking visitor information from one day to the next. We never store IP addresses in our database or logs. ... > In our testing, using IP addresses to count visitors is remarkably accurate when compared to using a cookie. Total unique visitor counts were within 10% error range with IP-based counting usually showing lower numbers. From here: https://plausible.io/blog/google-analytics-cookies#can-you-get-web-analytics-without-cookies https://plausible.io/blog/google-analytics-cookies#can-you-g...

mh- 6y ago
This would be woefully inaccurate for websites with a large amount of mobile traffic (because of CGNAT), or university traffic, or etc.
- icefo 6y ago
  Don't universities have a huge number of IPs because they were the first to use internet ? Mine gives one public ipv4 per device that access the internet on the network (with some exceptions). Strategies varies but if you have a lot of addresses why not use them.
  - jannes 6y ago
    That might be true for some US universities, but it's definitely not true for the rest of the world.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago

markosaric 6y ago

you can see the exact method on our data policy: https://plausible.io/data-policy https://plausible.io/data-policy