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Ask HN: Ethical analytics tech/company?

2 points by pnathan ↗ HN
I am working on launching a site soon and I'd like to be able to gain a certain amount of information about my (currently-hypothetical) users. I would also like to gain this information ethically. :-)

In particular & at this point in time, I'd like to know how they got to the site, what location they are at (by country), and what browser they are using. Ideally I could also track length of time they are using the site, repeat visitors, and what "paths" they take as they move through the site.

N.b.; this is my first real public website, so I'm not 100% familiar with the players.

2 comments

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I assume you don't think Google is ethical. Is that correct? What does ethical mean to you?
pnathan
Ethical, to me and in short, means that the analytic tech doesn't connect the data about a user to other sites; means they don't put an unkillable cookie on the machine; means that they don't try to "sell" the user's data to other entities.

Or, to put it another way, respects the user's privacy in a way that would be digitally analogous to an employee in a brick and mortar store watching someone wander through the isles.

I'm not entirely certain what, precisely, Google (or other companies) do internally with their data and the effectiveness of their policies. So I am asking around.