Google Analytics
(also known as Urchin) is a service from Google that helps website
owners analyze how users use their sites. Information about your use of
a certain website (including your IP address) can automatically be
transmitted to and stored by Google using cookies.
Today,
more that 200,000 websites use Google Analytics. You might have visited
such a website without knowing about it. You can always check the
source code of a page to find out if they are using Google Analytics.
Google Analytics tracking code
If you're concerned about your privacy, you might be wondering what you
can do to opt-out from Google Analytics. Today, there's no easy way of
doing that.
"You may refuse the use of cookies by
selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note
that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality
of the website." Google Analytics Terms of Service
The problem is that Google Analytics cookies are not third-party cookies,
they are true first-party cookies. To opt-out using Firefox you need to
block all cookies on all domains that
are using Google Analytics. And that would also make some of the
websites harder to use since many websites uses cookies to save your
prefereces.
CustomizeGoogle has a new optional feature that blocks all Google Analytics cookies, on any website. You can find this feature in
Firefox -> Tools -> CustomizeGoogle Options... -> Privacy
CustomizeGoogle Screenshot
Using
this feature makes you more anonymous. But your visit on a single
webpage can still be logged. This way, both Google and the owner of the
website knows that someone visited a webpage, but it's difficult to
track all pages you're visiting. And it's really really hard for Google
to track that you visited both Website A and Website B.
Note:
It's not impossible to log your visit, since your ip address is still
sent to both the website and Google Analytics. Also, the website might
be using Google AdSense which uses a separate cookie.
If you don't want to be logged at all you can always add "127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com" to your host file or use a proxy server.
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