We don't track people

By Adriaan van Rossum | 2 min (~300 words / 130)

In analytics land we love to save as much of the data we can gather, and our devices give a lot of data away. At Simple Analytics we don't think that's fair. Users shouldn't be the product and pay with their data.

Why not use Google Analytics?

Google is pretty open about collecting data (Google's policy):

The information we collect includes unique identifiers, browser type and settings, device type and settings, operating system, mobile network information including carrier name and phone number, and application version number [...], your apps, browsers, and devices with our services, including IP address, crash reports, system activity, and the date, time, and referrer URL of your request.

As you can read, they collect unique identifiers. These identifiers can be used to track people even when they are logged out. But does Google Analytics use this data for their advertisers? Yes, they absolutely do:

And we also use data about the ads you interact with to help advertisers understand the performance of their ad campaigns. We use a variety of tools to do this, including Google Analytics.

So by using Google Analytics you automatically give your users' data to the advertisers of Google. Are you still sure you want this?

..but I use the anonymization feature

If you are concerned about the privacy of your users, you maybe use the anonymization feature. This is a step in the right direction, but the sad reality is Google can still collect all the information. They can use the other information to track a user like fingerprinting. We don't save IP addresses at all. Not even a little bit. We are transparent what we collect, because we care about you and your users.

Read about why we care about privacy in "The easy answer to hard questions about analytics and privacy".