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I understand the implications and the underhanded nature of this sort of tracking. However, could it prove more efficient that traditional, legitimate analytics
by hayksaakian 13y ago
I understand the implications and the underhanded nature of this sort of tracking. However, could it prove more efficient that traditional, legitimate analytics? (eg: google analytics via cookies)
For example, could there be less bandwidth consumption using this method vs cookies?
- lucb1e 13y agoCookies are absurdly long nowadays, if they were shortened lots of bandwidth could be saved. Especially Google's analytics cookies are long and sometimes even contain referring domains or something. I don't really understand why they do this, but it probably has some use that lessens the burden on their database infrastructure at the cost of user bandwidth. Also this is more of a hack and sneaky tracking method than a legitimate way of identifying users. Whenever someone's cache is full or gets cleaned, the "cookie" (etag) will be lost.
- hayksaakian 13y agoCouldn't the same be said for cookies (clearing cache vs clearing cookies)? I was just wondering if there were technical advantages.
- lucb1e 13y agoHmm, I'm not sure I understand what you're asking or trying to achieve. Cookies are cleared when they expire; cache can be cleared at random.
- hayksaakian 13y agoI suppose you're right,
- dudus 13y agoThere's a new version of Google Analytics that uses a single a very shorter cookie. Doing most processing server side. This is called Universal Analytics.
- gizmo686 13y agoHow to you define absurdly long? How does the size of the cookies compare to the size of the image in an add banner, or even just the *.html file?
- lucb1e 13y agoWell, considering that you can easily identify every person on the planet uniquely with 5 bytes (256^5=1 000 000 000 000), I'd say these 200 byte+ cookies are much longer than needed. It suddenly starts making good sense that Google's spdy protocol compresses headers...
- qu4z-2 13y agoBear in mind that the cookie is included in the request, so it has to be uploaded by the user, unlike the ad banners or HTML. Upstream bandwidth is often slower than downstream.