Comment by harianus
7 years ago
Good comment! I only store the window.innerWidth metric. I updated the what we collect page (https://simpleanalytics.io/what-we-collect) to reflect the IP handling. We don't store them. And fingerprinting is something that would be definitely tracking, not on my watch!
> We don't collect and store IPs.
First, "IPs" might be confusing; "IP addresses" would be more accurate.
More importantly, you have to collect IP addresses (or any other value in the packet headers[1][2]) - even if you don't store it - if you want to receive any packets from the rest of the internet. Storage of those values is separate issue entirely, and it's good to hear that you are intending to NOT store IP addresses (and updating the documenting)!
Also, I strongly recommend using Drdrdrq's suggestion to lower the precision of the collected window dimensions, which should be done on the client i.e. "Math.floor(window.innerWidth/50)*50". This kind of bit-reduction makes fingerprinting a lot harder.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4#Header
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol#...
I would argue that in the conversational context "collect" is more a synonym for "store" than for "receive" or "see". Moreso in the context of a tracking system. In my opinion anyway.
You wrote "Point." - did you mean "Period."?
There is absolutely no reason to collect and store window dimensions, other than for fingerprinting and tracking. Sure it might be an interesting piece of trivia for the dev, but it's not necessary for the dev to "make sure the website works great on all of those dimensions", since that much is already obvious and presumed when making websites these days.
Actually there is, this is one of the most interesting metrics. It doesn't have to be precise though, rounding to nearest 50px would be more than enough. I would argue that height and aspect ratio should be collected too. (I didn't downvote you FWIW)
Could you round to buckets as well - take the 10 (say) most common screen sizes, and round users to the nearest? That way users with odd screen sizes aren't identified.
Heck, "rounding" to desktop/mobile could tell you enough to know what to focus your dev time on.
Could there not be value in knowing how many pixels your users have available to view your things? You could presumably get that information from device characteristics but then could also presumably use that for fingerprinting.
You as the developer have access to and are aware of all possible display dimensions and aspect ratios. It's not that hard to prioritize the sizes you want to support and then work based off that. There are plenty of tools out there that let you simulate different screen sizes for testing too. I don't see this information providing any extra value.
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Besides... optimizing a site for specific window dimensions? If I see conversion rate is lower on a certain band of dimensions, something likely doesn't display properly. It'd be impossible to test every dimension.