This is why I have analytics on the JavaScript side and server side. I can calculate those who block my analytics and at the same time capture a lot of the relevant information
On the other hand, that’s a fairly entitled viewpoint.
Users are using infrastructure I finance, to do things on the website(s) I created. If you want privacy from the services youre using, create or host your own.
I keep the data secure and don’t give it to 3rd parties. That information is used to fix bugs, improve / build services, etc.
I’m not “subverting” privacy, users are coming to my house and playing with my things, so to speak.
Until then, your HTML is interpreted by my browser, any resources are going over my network (and only my network if they're 3rd party) and the JavaScript is running on my machine . So I'll be having them obey my rules.
That does not matter, at least in the EU where citizens are protected by the GDPR. Article 6 of the GDPR:
Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies:
(a) the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes;
However, OP does not understand why you are so entitled to want to use their website for free, and then also want to tell them that they is not allowed to make note of you having done so.
"his or her personal data"
Analytics is not personal. No one shares their names or social security number. And I strongly agree with people above mentioning The Visitor is the requester. We provide services, they use it, we want to understand what we are doing by checking analytics. Nothing immoral about this.
* ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;*
In the legal opinions that the EU provides with the GDPR, random tokens that are associated with a person are PD. An IP address is also considered personal data:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
Nothing immoral about this.
What is ethical is a personal opinion, but collecting personal data (following the definition above) is simply not legal without consent in the EU.
(f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child.
General analytics on a website are probably not covered under f, since it is not necessary and not what you’d expect when you visit a website to which you have no customer relation.
There are clear cases where one has to collect data, even without consent, such as fraud prevention.
Users are using infrastructure I finance, to do things on the website(s) I created. If you want privacy from the services youre using, create or host your own.
IANAL, but this is not legal under the GDPR. The GDPR requires op-in. Moreover, you cannot make non-anonymous[1] data collection mandatory to use a product, unless it is necessary for the product to function (in a strict sense).
[1] Anonymous does not seem to include pseudonyms like a random identifier in the GDPR, since pseudonyms could be linked to real identifiers in the future.
I do the opposite, my webserver sends back some information unsolicited about my production environment that you can track if you want.
Not everyone does smart things with the data.
I'm not on Twitter…
> It comes across as smug, because you assume you're an authority on what a "good look" is, that is, what the correct thinking is. But you're doing this while the reader is noting that you failed to express a real argument, so they're not sure you even know what the correct thinking is, let alone why it ought to be correct.
I think it's fairly obvious what my argument it: people who are blocking client-side analytics have expressed a clear interest in not being tracked. Saying that you're tracking them anyways on your server shows that you don't really care about their wishes–and as other have mentioned, it might fall afoul of active consent legal requirements. Considering that my comment is currently at the top of this thread, I think it would be fairly difficult to not know what my argument is.