Metadata
- Author: Brian Clifton
- Full Title:: Benign Analytics - Why I Think the Sky Is Not Falling in for Web Tracking
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- Document Tags:: gdpr, GDPR, google analytics, Google Analytics,
- URL:: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-think-sky-falling-web-analytics-brian-clifton-phd-/
- Finished date:: 2023-11-04
Highlights
A lot is being made of the implications of the Court of Justice of the European (CJEU) ruling - that is, visitor data can only be collected if the visitor explicitly confirms. That is, an opt-in only. No pre-filling of checkboxes is accepted - I actually thought this was already pretty clear in law, but obviously not. (View Highlight)
There are major differences between visitor profiling, ad targeting and so forth that EU privacy laws are rightly focusing on, versus benign and aggregate tracking that legitimate businesses wish to perform - for example using tools such as Google Analytics, in order to provide essential metrics. BTW, the word essential is important here (View Highlight)
But this is super aggregated: can’t I still understand some basic dimensions (e.g., country) while preserving a user privacy?
Benign metrics include: Knowing how many visits came; How long did they stay; What pages did they view; What campaign or search query did they click on to arrive on the site etc (View Highlight)
This type of analysis is highly relevant and valuable in itself - and you get all the numbers without profiling your visitors, or interrupting them with a banner for consent! (View Highlight)