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Date:      Sun, 9 Dec 2012 15:36:17 +0100
From:      "deeptech71@gmail.com" <deeptech71@gmail.com>
To:        freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
Cc:        gjb@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: The FreeBSD Project is enabling Google Analytics on www.freebsd.org
Message-ID:  <CAF6hryQDzoM5KzGGNLHLs72gLMRfG3SjEnY-iS9H6pVyZJGWbQ@mail.gmail.com>

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Glen Barber wrote:
> The FreeBSD Project is enabling Google Analytics on www.freebsd.org.

Congratulations, by choosing probably the easiest-to-use but
most-threatening-to-users tracking system, you have successfully
managed to display amateurism on part of the web site's staff.

> But we can do this on our own, why do we need to send data to a third
> party?
>
> - Doing this on our own means increased infrastructure, increased
>   maintenance, and increased security exposure.
>
> - Google already supplies a large number of tools, there isn't a need
>   to duplicate effort.

Noone asked you to create your own tools from the ground up.
Ironically speaking, have you even googled for (open source) web
analytics software? Software that takes 10 minutes to install.

> - Google Analytics answers questions that cannot be discerned from
>   just grepping logs.  For example, How long do FreeBSD users browse
>   the website; which pages are most likely to bounce users or draw
>   users in; what is the most common screen resolution, which Operating
>   Systems visitors to the website read and which pages specifically?

> By using Google Analytics, some of the things we can learn
> (specifically about our documentation) include:

You meant to say: "By using some web analytics solution, some of the
things we can learn include [...]; BTW, we choose Google's solution."

> But I don't want Google to know I exist!?
>
> It is possible to opt-out by setting the "Do Not Track" flag on your
> browser.

Information (that can be used against me) gathered indirectly from
billions of sources is often stronger than information gathered
directly. I'd rather have it that Google could track me, but noone
else.


European Union data protection regulations -- smartly -- require web
sites to notify users if their data is being collected, although these
regulations are not very actively enforced yet. Not only that you do
not have such a notification, you don't even have the Privacy Policy
section linked on the main page!



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