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Assuming you're correct, can anyone think of a way to count unique visitors without storing data on a users machine or using identifiable user information? Iden

Assuming you're correct, can anyone think of a way to count unique visitors without storing data on a users machine or using identifiable user information? Identifiable user information should include hashes that can be re-computed given the original information. This isn't a criticism of the law, I'm just curious what options there could be, because I can't think of any.

genewitch 4y ago
Hi there, Marketing Company Intern! Tell them you'd rather make the coffee ;-)
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  Ha, that would explain that question. My first reaction was mostly confusion as there is so much prior art at this point, i.e. fingerprinting through installed add-ons, resolution/window size/system language, browser language, IP locality etc. There are even demo pages around which shows you just how unique your configuration is even without anything else. https://amiunique.org/fp https://amiunique.org/fp
- yellow_lead 4y ago
  Lol, I knew it would sound that way, but I don't work in this domain - just interested in privacy and this problem.
  - genewitch 4y ago
    the only reason we could think of for wanting unique visitors was for the marketing people or investors/stakeholders/shareholders. Parsing the request logs should be sufficient for every other metric. We had a bunch of meetings about this at what essentially amounted to a giant information superhighway billboard company. IIRC someone brought up using cache headers even back then, because it didn't require cookies or javascript, which we couldn't guarantee would be "up to date", this is back in "target IE6, still" days. As one of my networking friends said, advertisers usually know everything about your metrics, even if you don't. You can't really fudge the numbers in your favor, so raw requests or QPS or whatever ancillary metric would be enough. the method in the article is defeated by clearing your session when you're done browsing, or using incognito/private browsing tab, as that should mark all "cached" items for deletion.
deleted 4y ago
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rattt 4y ago
Something like HyperLogLog might be fine assuming you don't need perfect accuracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperLogLog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperLogLog

genewitch 4y ago

Hi there, Marketing Company Intern! Tell them you'd rather make the coffee ;-)

411111111111111 4y ago
Ha, that would explain that question. My first reaction was mostly confusion as there is so much prior art at this point, i.e. fingerprinting through installed add-ons, resolution/window size/system language, browser language, IP locality etc. There are even demo pages around which shows you just how unique your configuration is even without anything else. https://amiunique.org/fp https://amiunique.org/fp
yellow_lead 4y ago
Lol, I knew it would sound that way, but I don't work in this domain - just interested in privacy and this problem.
- genewitch 4y ago
  the only reason we could think of for wanting unique visitors was for the marketing people or investors/stakeholders/shareholders. Parsing the request logs should be sufficient for every other metric. We had a bunch of meetings about this at what essentially amounted to a giant information superhighway billboard company. IIRC someone brought up using cache headers even back then, because it didn't require cookies or javascript, which we couldn't guarantee would be "up to date", this is back in "target IE6, still" days. As one of my networking friends said, advertisers usually know everything about your metrics, even if you don't. You can't really fudge the numbers in your favor, so raw requests or QPS or whatever ancillary metric would be enough. the method in the article is defeated by clearing your session when you're done browsing, or using incognito/private browsing tab, as that should mark all "cached" items for deletion.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rattt 4y ago

Something like HyperLogLog might be fine assuming you don't need perfect accuracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperLogLog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperLogLog