A quick look at privacy-focused analytics for small sites

The environmental benefits of privacy-focussed web design - Root Web Design Studio

Even the smallest of business websites now seems to have cookie popups simultaneously telling us they ‘value your privacy’ while harvesting data about who we are, where we are, what we’re looking for and what we were doing online before we landed there.

Tracking scripts have become so pervasive that they have effectively become an industry standard, and most businesses deploy them not only without question, but without consideration of what it means for customer privacy.

Email Tracking and Paperless Banking – Dan Q

Even if you can somehow justify using tracking technologies (which don’t work reliably) to make general, statistical decisions (“fewer people open our emails when the subject contains the word ‘overdraft’!”), you can’t make individual decisions based on them. That’s just wrong.

On User Tracking and Industry Standards on Privacy | CSS-Tricks

Prompted by my post on tracking, Chris does some soul searching about his own use of tracking.

I’m interested not just in the ethical concerns and my long-time complacency with industry norms, but also as someone who very literally sells advertising.

He brings up the point that advertisers expect to know how many people opened a particular email and how many people clicked on a particular link. I’m sure that’s right, but it’s also beside the point: what matters is how the receiver of the email feels about having that information tracked. If they haven’t given you permission to do it, you can’t just assume they’re okay with it.

Some long-winded thoughts on privacy policies and consent popups — Piper Haywood

A deep dive into GDPR.

Got Google Analytics on your site? You should probably read this.

No cookie for you - The GitHub Blog

I wish more companies would realise that this is a perfectly reasonable approach to take:

We decided to look for a solution. After a brief search, we found one: just don’t use any non-essential cookies. Pretty simple, really. 🤔

So, we have removed all non-essential cookies from GitHub, and visiting our website does not send any information to third-party analytics services.