On: Switch to HTTPS Now, For Free

[huhtenberg]

Oh, the sweet irony -

> SSL’s not perfect, but we need to make surveillance as expensive as possible

immediately followed by -

> And hey, bonus: more complete referrer information in Google Analytics

Make up your mind already. Are you against the surveillance or for it? You can't really sit with one ass on two chairs.

  --

(edit) Point being is that if you are pulling the anti-surveillance card, then you shouldn't really be siphoning off your visitors data to Google.

[doppel → huhtenberg]

I wouldn't exactly categorize "everyone can see your data" and "we can now track your movement on our own site" together.

The idea of surveillance, in this case, is that no 3rd parties can snoop on your data. If you are actively using a site, it should be under the assumption that they can and will track anything you do on their site.

[huhtenberg → doppel]

> no 3rd parties can snoop on your data

And Google is what... ?

[ars_technician → huhtenberg]

Someone you are willfully sending information about requests to? What's so hard to understand. Just because you let your doctor put his finger in your ass doesn't mean you want to let everyone...

[huhtenberg → ars_technician]

Except with external analytics you are letting your doctor to finger other people's asses. See the difference?

[greyfade → huhtenberg]

I think the idea is to make MitM snooping more difficult, not necessarily data collection by a third-party.

I agree, though, it is kind of silly, knowing that Google has been complying with large numbers of FISA requests.

[konklone → greyfade]

Google Analytics data is anonymized and aggregated - it's very different than request patterns and sessions tied to a specific IP.

[bigiain → konklone]

The data Google give back to you in Analytics may be "anonymized and aggregated", but the data you're allowing them to collect from your users on your behalf is certainly individually-identifying and specific (and shareable with the NSA either wholesale via some PRISM-like means, or at the very least via court order or NSL)

[konklone → bigiain]

I've been told Piwik (http://piwik.org) is very good. I'll give them a shot. If they're good enough, maybe I'll replace Google Analytics with them - then at least I own all the data myself.

[alextingle → huhtenberg]

/etc/hosts...

   # Screw Google...
   127.0.0.1	www.google-analytics.com
   127.0.0.1	ssl.google-analytics.com

[Tichy → alextingle]

Are you sure they only use one domain? Perhaps for analytics, but there is also adsense, doubleclick and who knows what else.

[alextingle → Tichy]

I don't mind adsense, and if I did, there's always AdBlock. No, analytics was annoying me because of page load time. The number of times my browser stopped loading because "waiting for google-analytics.com" got me wound up enough one day to just block them for good.

[konklone → alextingle]

Yeah, I use this myself a lot, especially when I'm in places with bad wifi.

I mentioned this in a separate comment, but I can use this as inspiration to try out Piwik (http://piwik.org), and see if it can replace Google Analytics.

I use Chartbeat for real-time-y stuff and alerts, which it's exceptional at. I think Piwik may have a harder time replacing that one, but I'll certainly try it.