Why are we tracked by Google Analytics on this forum?

[bwallum]

Hi

I'm using ghostery from www.ghostery.com to see who tracks me. Google Analytics track this site. Why does Ubuntu do that?

[zombifier25]

Hi

I'm using ghostery from www.ghostery.com to see who tracks me. Google Analytics track this site. Why does Ubuntu do that?

Did you mean: Ubuntuforums.org

[bwallum]

yes

[vasa1]

yes

To gather usage statistics, as do many other sites.

[bwallum]

BBC News doesn't track me.

[bwallum]

To gather usage statistics, as do many other sites.

There are more anonymous, server side, ways of determining usage stats, Google Analytics gets personal on my machine

[vasa1]

There are more anonymous, server side, ways of determining usage stats, Google Analytics gets personal on my machine

If you have "privacy" problems just block ga.js and whatever else you need to.

And it's upto the forum admins or whoever to decide how to determine user stats. We, as users, have the freedom to block what we want.

[vasa1]

BBC News doesn't track me.

How can we tell? Do we know what

2012-05-09 17:19:40.138 b4efeb40 Request: sa.bbc.co.uk/bbc/bbc/s?name=home.page&geo_edition=asia&pal_route=default&ml_name=barlesque&app_type=web&language=en-GB&ml_version=0.8.2&pal_webapp=wwhomepage&ns__t=1336564180087&ns_c=UTF-8&ns_ti=BBC%20-%20Homepage&ns_jspageurl=http%3A//www.bbc.co.uk/&ns_referrer=
2012-05-09 17:19:40.346 b56ffb40 Crunch: Blocked: http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js
2012-05-09 17:19:40.350 b46fdb40 Crunch: Blocked: http://me-cdn.effectivemeasure.net/em.js

do?
And bbc.co.uk does drop a couple of cookies as well.

[buzzingrobot]

Sites have been watching how people interact with their content since the beginning of the web. They'd be foolish not to. If someone doesn't like cookies, they can block them. But, there's no way to keep a site from tracking behavior on that site.

[L3ct3rIII]

If you have "privacy" problems just block ga.js and whatever else you need to.

And it's upto the forum admins or whoever to decide how to determine user stats. We, as users, have the freedom to block what we want.

Since this was originally posted on Absolute Beginner Talk, hope if you don't mind if I ask... How can we do this? How can you do this, say, on Firefox 12? Or, besides the browser, could we do this on the OS itself? I got interested.

Thank you.