of_privacy_and_traffic_tracking.html


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<meta name="tags" content="privacy, analytics, traffic, tracking">
<meta name="published-on" content="2020-07-11T21:11:00+02:00">
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<title>Of Privacy and Traffic Tracking</title>

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<nav><a href="https://ignore.pl">ignore.pl</a></nav>
<time>11 July 2020</time>
<h1>Of Privacy and Traffic Tracking</h1>
</header>

<article>
<p>Over the past weeks I wondered if anyone actually reads or visits this website. I kind of started worrying that
someone could want to leave some feedback in one way or another. I have plans to handle that, but I also have other
interests right now. I decided to quickly set up a method that will show me that there is no need to worry or hurry up.
<p>I deployed the very first version today. I think I spent more time deploying it to the server compared to the amount
of time I put into writing it (systemd had some life problems and I was extremely stubborn to preserve 517 day long
uptime). Anyway, don't expect too much from it.
<p>The goals are quite clear: respect user's privacy and collect useful information. Filter the data as soon as possible
to minimize what is stored. I'm not interested in some big data or hard-core traffic analysis across huge chunks of the
Internet (sup, Google Analytics). I just want to know if there is someone who spent time reading what I wrote.</p>
<img src="of_privacy_and_traffic_tracking-1.png" alt="magnifying glass">
<p>Ok, so what data do I collect right now?</p>
<ul>
<li>Address of the tracked page
<li>Address of the page that user came from (referrer)
<li>Time and date when user loaded the tracked page
<li>Time spent on the tracked page
<li>The lowest vertical position user scrolled to
</ul>
<p>That's all. I don't collect any form of identification. Data that is stored is not even linked to the IP address that
sent it over. <strong>That's the point</strong>.
<p>In future I would like to minimize data collection even further. I already mentioned early filtering, but there are
also some other improvements I would like to have. The approaches are quite naive. For example, time user spent looking
at the page is calculated as time from <code>load</code> event to <code>beforeunload</code> event.
<p>Source code is available via <a href="https://git.ignore.pl/rudone/">public git repository</a>.
</article>
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