For most cookie-based solutions, it's easy: Store a unique identifier (UID) in a cookie on your computer, so we can identify you when you return. But

Counting unique visitors without using cookies, UIDs or fingerprinting

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2024-12-09 22:00:55

For most cookie-based solutions, it's easy: Store a unique identifier (UID) in a cookie on your computer, so we can identify you when you return. But if there's no cookie, there's no UID... or so you'd think.

Many privacy-focused analytics services will generate and store a UID on the server instead of saving it in a cookie - based on a hash of your User Agent, IP, Location, Date etc. This "fingerprint" is stored in a database and checked every time you visit the site to see if you've visited it before. To improve privacy, it can be washed from the database once it's served it's purpose e.g. on a daily basis. Some analytics services simply rely on the page referrer being on the same domain as your current URL.

Previous experiments at Normally have revealed that linking data points in a database in any way, such as with a UID, has the potential to reveal someone's identity. Connecting just few data points such as the city, time and visited pages could tell us more than we need to know about that visitor and sometimes lead to their identification in the real world.

While building Cabin, we didn't want to use UIDs at all, and the referrer couldn't be relied upon in all browsers (some browsers and extensions can hide it). So we came up with a different approach.