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This is an article on why you should stop using Google Analytics and find a different, privacy focused, and efficient provider.
05.0 - Sites and platforms to avoid
06.0 - Sites and platforms that don't use Google Analytics
07.0 - Other things to check out
Like other Google products, Google Analytics have a history of privacy and performance issues. Many browsers have had to implement various methods at blocking Google Analytics, which wastes valuable development time. Google Analytics is used on ~75% of the top websites (as of February 26th 2021) so whenever a site uses Google Analytics, it tracks your IP address and monitors you.
General description from Wikipedia: Google Analytics - Data from Februry 26th 2021 at 5:40:31 pm (PT: Pacific Time)
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin.
As of 2019, Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytics service on the web. Google Analytics provides an SDK that allows gathering usage data from iOS and Android app, known as Google Analytics for Mobile Apps. Google Analytics can be blocked by browsers, browser extensions, firewalls and other means.
Google Analytics has undergone many versions since its inception. It is currently on its 4th iteration of the platform which is called GA4. GA4, now being the default Google Analytics installation, is the renamed version for the App+Web Property that Google had released in 2019 in a Beta form. GA4 has currently replaced UA, Universal Analytics. One notable feature of GA4 is a natural integration with Google's Big Query a feature previously only available with the enterprise GA 360. This move indicates efforts by Google to integrate GA and its free users into their wider cloud offering.
Google has a very very bad record when it comes to user privacy. (I could go on and on with evidence of this, but it took a long time to find and go through all these articles)
Privacy on Google products is always bad, due to all Google products containing spyware.
No matter what you do, when you are using Google, all of your sensitive personal data is being sent to Google and others. Google has also been spotted going through open programs. For example, from personal experience (on Firefox) with a YouTube tab open that I didn't visit, I watched several videos offline (VLC Media Player) Later when I went to check the recommendations, it was nearly everything that I had watched. There is no doubt they are spying on other programs too.
In Chrome (and many other browsers) an incognito mode is present. In Chrome, this mode is pointless, as Google will still mine your data. Even if you turn data mining/tracking off, and enable the "do not track" signal, surprise suprise, Google is still mining your data.
If you think you have nothing to hide, you are absolutely wrong. This argument has been debunked many times over:
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Edward Snowden remarked "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. "When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights."
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Daniel J. Solove stated in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education that he opposes the argument; he stated that a government can leak information about a person and cause damage to that person, or use information about a person to deny access to services even if a person did not actually engage in wrongdoing, and that a government can cause damage to one's personal life through making errors. Solove wrote "When engaged directly, the nothing-to-hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing-to-hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say."
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Adam D. Moore, author of Privacy Rights: Moral and Legal Foundations, argued, "it is the view that rights are resistant to cost/benefit or consequentialist sort of arguments. Here we are rejecting the view that privacy interests are the sorts of things that can be traded for security." He also stated that surveillance can disproportionately affect certain groups in society based on appearance, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion.
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Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and cryptographer, expressed opposition, citing Cardinal Richelieu's statement "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged", referring to how a state government can find aspects in a person's life in order to prosecute or blackmail that individual. Schneier also argued "Too many wrongly characterize the debate as 'security versus privacy.' The real choice is liberty versus control."
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Harvey A. Silverglate estimated that the common person, on average, unknowingly commits three felonies a day in the US.
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Emilio Mordini, philosopher and psychoanalyst, argued that the "nothing to hide" argument is inherently paradoxical. People do not need to have "something to hide" in order to hide "something". What is hidden is not necessarily relevant, claims Mordini. Instead, he argues an intimate area which can be both hidden and access-restricted is necessary since, psychologically speaking, we become individuals through the discovery that we could hide something to others.
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Julian Assange stated "There is no killer answer yet. Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) has a clever response, asking people who say this to then hand him their phone unlocked and pull down their pants. My version of that is to say, 'well, if you're so boring then we shouldn't be talking to you, and neither should anyone else', but philosophically, the real answer is this: Mass surveillance is a mass structural change. When society goes bad, it's going to take you with it, even if you are the blandest person on earth."
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Ignacio Cofone, law professor, argues that the argument is mistaken in its own terms because, whenever people disclose relevant information to others, they also disclose irrelevant information. This irrelevant information has privacy costs and can lead to other harms, such as discrimination.
Google Analytics are the same as all other Google products. Google Analytics contains spyware, as Google is not just a search company, they are a user data company, and you are the product. To Google, you are only worth about $700.00 (unless you are making them ad revenue)
There are no good alternative solutions at the moment, as most analytic service contain trackers
This list is incomplete
Twitter analytics (not recommended)
Facebook analytics (not recommended)
This list is incomplete
Here is a list of some notable sites and platforms using Google Analytics that you should avoid
The Nintendo Switch uses Google Analytics (as of 2020)
This list is highly incomplete
This list is highly incomplete
Here is a list of some notable sites and platforms that don't use Google Analytics that you don't have to be worried about:
This list is highly incomplete
TheOldNet {WARNING: NON HTTPS LINK} - This site was made for Internet browsing on very old web browsers (WWW/Nexus, Internet Explorer 1 and up, Firefox 0.5 and up, Netscape Navigator 2 and up, Opera 1 and up, Safari 0.2 and up, Google Chrome 0.4 and up, etc.)
WinWorldPC - Contains some trackers, but no Google trackers, as of February 26th 2021 at 5:50 pm
This list is highly incomplete
Google Analytics is dominant on the web, and is used to track users to place more targeted and creepy ads.
This section is incomplete.
The Google Graveyard (killedbygoogle.com) - a sorted list of the 224+ products Google has killed
Alphabet worker union - The new workers union at Google with over 800 members
Don't want to part with the dinosaur easter egg? This website has you covered
There are other alternates, just search for them.
Some fact checking is needed for this article. This article was rushed, and more info needs to be added.
File type: Markdown (*.md)
File version: 1 (Friday, February 26th 2021 at 5:59 pm)
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All of my works are free from restrictions. DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) is not present in any of my works. This project does not contain any DRM
This sticker is supported by the Free Software Foundation. I never intend to include DRM in my works.
Version 1 (Friday, February 26th 2021 at 5:59 pm)
Changes:
- Started the file/article
- Added the title section
- Referenced 2 images
- Added a section about privacy
- Added a section about the overview
- Added the article info section
- Referenced the DRM Free icon
- Added the file history section
- Added the alternative solutions section
- Added the privacy focused subsection
- Added the other subsection
- Added the Problem section
- Added the sites to avoid section
- Added the safe sites section
- Added the other things to check out section
- Added the index
- Added the footer
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Version 2 (Coming soon)
Changes:
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