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It's all stuff from Google but in the hands of different people. Google Analytics is installed by the owner of the website; it makes a promise to them: it coll

It's all stuff from Google but in the hands of different people. Google Analytics is installed by the owner of the website; it makes a promise to them: it collects everything it can. If Google Analytics actually ignored data from Chrome in Incognito mode, it raises some questions: * How does it detect that, exactly? * Is there an unfair competition aspect to it? What about other browsers, not from Google?

vinger 6y ago
What other browser hold 70/80% of the market?
fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
Yeah, making incognito mode detectable would be a huge privacy issue: it would enable blocking users based on incognito and all sorts of other bad issues. If incognito mode is undetectable, there’s no way for Google Analytics to distinguish between “cross-device” traffic from an incognito window vs. from a phone and a laptop. Whether or not cross-decide tracking is good or bad, it’s irrelevant to this question.
- postalrat 6y ago
  How is blocking incognito a bad thing? Right there it should tell the user they need to avoid that site at any price. I'm pretty sure incognito is detectable right now. I'm always going to assume it is.
bee_rider 6y ago
That second point is really interesting. It seems sketchy on both ends, really. Either they are intentionally circumventing their own privacy feature, or they are giving their own browser an unfair competitive advantage. Huh, maybe the level of integration here is just inherently problematic and companies shouldn't try to fulfill every role in the market.
unilynx 6y ago
> If Google Analytics actually ignored data from Chrome in Incognito mode, it raises some questions: How does it detect that, exactly? The most honest implementation would be to set the DNT header in incognito mode (as Firefox apparently does) and to have Analytics honor it. Does not require anything shady/anticompetitive
- captn3m0 6y ago
  This. Would be amazing to have a ruling enforcing DNT on GA, even if for Incognito since that gives backing to the DNT header, which has mostly been "don't honor" for advertisers.
  - d1zzy 6y ago
    As long as I can disable it (because DNT provides a pretty strong identification signal right now).
josefx 6y ago
> How does it detect that, exactly? Detect that chrome didn't send the x-client-data id it sends to every google owned domain. Oh, wait, it probably still does that in incognito mode.

vinger 6y ago

What other browser hold 70/80% of the market?

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago

Yeah, making incognito mode detectable would be a huge privacy issue: it would enable blocking users based on incognito and all sorts of other bad issues. If incognito mode is undetectable, there’s no way for Google Analytics to distinguish between “cross-device” traffic from an incognito window vs. from a phone and a laptop. Whether or not cross-decide tracking is good or bad, it’s irrelevant to this question.

postalrat 6y ago
How is blocking incognito a bad thing? Right there it should tell the user they need to avoid that site at any price. I'm pretty sure incognito is detectable right now. I'm always going to assume it is.

bee_rider 6y ago

That second point is really interesting. It seems sketchy on both ends, really. Either they are intentionally circumventing their own privacy feature, or they are giving their own browser an unfair competitive advantage. Huh, maybe the level of integration here is just inherently problematic and companies shouldn't try to fulfill every role in the market.

unilynx 6y ago

> If Google Analytics actually ignored data from Chrome in Incognito mode, it raises some questions: How does it detect that, exactly? The most honest implementation would be to set the DNT header in incognito mode (as Firefox apparently does) and to have Analytics honor it. Does not require anything shady/anticompetitive

captn3m0 6y ago
This. Would be amazing to have a ruling enforcing DNT on GA, even if for Incognito since that gives backing to the DNT header, which has mostly been "don't honor" for advertisers.
- d1zzy 6y ago
  As long as I can disable it (because DNT provides a pretty strong identification signal right now).

josefx 6y ago

> How does it detect that, exactly? Detect that chrome didn't send the x-client-data id it sends to every google owned domain. Oh, wait, it probably still does that in incognito mode.