fsenart

We may converge. Though, let's don't end up in an ideological battle. Thank you for the ride so far.

It's not about accuracy. In the original question, I've depicted a simple ladder of identity, and we both agree that the most accurate counter would be the counter of logged-in users. Anything after is by definition less accurate. In addition, the argument about adblockers is a matter of popularity and time, take, for example, the many contribs to open blocklist projects trying to blacklist the most popular privacy-focused tools. How ironic! Finally, I won't go into the GA bashing game at least out of respect for those who work on and with it, every day; an because it's out of scope here.

So what can we compare? How can we conclude? Let's focus on the very constituent of a unique/returning user metric.

It's all about semantics. We must first agree on semantic and then compare tools. And we both know what is the semantic of a unique/returning user and what cannot be.

Clearly, there is no privacy-focused tool, to the extent of my knowledge, that can or do provide a unique/returning users metric. Though, the problem is that all of them advertise the opposite, sometimes event viciously.

Any other discussion going beyond the semantic feels like I wanted orange juice; still, you provided me with a blend containing no orange while trying to either convince me that orange isn't that good or misleading me by advertising loudly that the blend contains orange.

I hope you don't mind me if we stay focused on the original question even though all the subjects are interesting per se.

> I do think there is a HUGE difference...

This is off-topic and a matter of perspective.

> I understand that your main concern is not privacy, but the usefulness of such privacy-friendly stats.

It's not about my privacy concerns. It's about the purpose, legitimacy, and effectiveness of a feature. Showing a count of unique/returning visitors is simply a lie; privacy friendliness apart.

> Analytics is a very complex space...

This is off-topic and a matter of approach and experience.

> Privacy-focused tools already clearly state that they are a "simple" alternative and that they offer only basic stats.

This is the central subject of the discussion. They all promote simplicity and coolness. However, simple != erroneous. You can be simple and provide correct information or not provide them at all. Otherwise, there is a problem of ethics and liability.

How can we trust tools supposed to handle our online privacy while at the same time the same tools are pretending something that is not true?

And please, don't get me wrong. It's all about the metric on users. In effect, the same tools without these particular metrics may have an audience striving for such simplicity. However, with these invalid metrics baked in, it seems to be a more opportunistic move than a privacy-focused one.

Thank you very much for your comment.

Nowadays, privacy is a pretty convoluted word. I like to consider it from the point of view of the most impacted actor, the end-user. And from his perspective, you remain a third party as long as his data is concerned. The sole fact that the tool is self-hosted cannot be a guarantee of privacy. Though, it's more likely to achieve stronger privacy if the number of third parties is small.

Therefore, with your tool:

- Either you have an identity (i.e., hash(x,y,z)) that is persisted over time (notwithstanding its accuracy).

- Or you have an identity that is forgotten after a certain period of time (e.g., 24h).

In the first case, it cannot be considered a privacy-focused tool, and in the second case, it has the same shortcomings I've described in the original question.

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It is crucial to note that the question is about the quality of users' metrics in privacy-focused tools.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. End-user's privacy comes at the expense of actionable metrics. Furthermore, at best, people using these tools are not aware of the shortcomings and the risk of misleading numbers. At worse, these very concerns are kept away in the marketing speeches of these tools to minimize their real impact.

Above is an opinion, and I would like to debate about it. About my possible misunderstanding of these tools. About possible solutions.

Thank you for your insights.

The metric is pretty simple, the number of unique visitors. And the setup is simple, too, with no identity whatsoever. But are they compatible? This is the question.

Your approach is interesting. You take a stance: let's have precise metrics when users consent and don't consider those who didn't give their consent. This approach relies on the underlying assumption that those who do not give their consent represent a minority and thus don't have a perceivable impact on the overall statistics. And this very assumption may be false.

Thank you so much for your thorough answer. I can totally understand what you say about helping seeds grow and the "analytics fatigue" when it comes to legacy tools. I also understand that you are not much interested in how your visitor base or visit cohorts evolve. Beyond, please share if you have any hints about how you may estimate these metrics with your current tools.

It seems a pretty sad world to me. The sole fact that we are talking about offense and defense is harsh. An individual needs his fundamental rights to be respected, and at the same time, a service provider needs data to pursue improve his product. We should consider both to hope for a balance. IMHO, the problem with today's solutions is that the individual is set out of the equation because data are "considered" anonymous. We take for granted something that may at least deserve more attention. By promoting consent as a first-class citizen, we can reposition the individual at the center again.

Where does the anonymous data come from? If anonymous data are considered as a disjoint and absolute point, then you're right. However, when considering the result of a set of transformations originating from an actual individual, we may have to question ourselves. Does the individual agree to be part of the process? Shouldn't we ask for his consent in the first place?

So what is the solution? In the absence of effective enforcement, do we have to resign ourselves? Or can we force the industry and its practices to change?

> If data collected are anonymous, what right to privacy is being infringed upon?

The data are collected. In their essence, they originate from the individual (in any way whatsoever). Doesn't the individual have an absolute right of the property upon these data?

> others are still free to e.g. count me if they want to make statistics on how busy a street is.

Is that something we are used to or something that should be questioned? Can I require not to be counted, to not exists in the statistics?

Does the fact of being able to do something should justify the fact of doing it? Nothing stops an individual from having a scrapbook of observations they made of people. But is it compatible with these people's right to privacy?

I see. We are not storing the PII (ip + ua) and do not expect you to send us any PII (e.g. as part of your page title, etc). Basically, (ip + ua) hit our servers, are translated into a hash and mapped to a random id. When you come back, we recalculate the hash, find your random id and forward it to GA. And, after 24h everything is deleted.

Ya sure for the cloud agnostic deployment . Thank you for your feedback.

For the GDPR part, the whole point of the project is that any data that comes out of the proxy is completely anonymized and as such is not subject to GDPR.

Hi there. For this initial launch, we focused on AWS serverless and CloudFormation. But why not in the future.