Prevent Google Analytics from tracking your visit

No kidding, is this true?

Not all website visitors like to reveal their details to the website owner. If you are one of these visitors, you can block Google Analytics from tracking your visits by adding the following line to your Windows Hosts file

There are tons of other ways to track users on my sites from server side stats to cookies. Google has done nothing else then provide just another free analytics service.

Don't forget secure websites
127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com

I used to be distrustful of being "tracked", until I became a "tracker". I monitor the traffic to my website, not to be sneaky, but to find out how to make the site better. Pages that people immediately leave may well need attention. Trying to imagine what visitors want is not the same as actually seeing what is happening on the site, and many things I was imagining to be true, weren't true at all. I was making many bad decisions by trying to feel my way through blindly. I'm not selling anything, am not out there to make money, my purpose is to promote an aesthetic view of mathematics, and I need to utilize every possible venue in order to achieve the best possible results. Monitoring my web traffic helps me do this. Information about individual people is not a part of this, it doesn't come into play. No one is being "spied on." Based on my experiences, this is a paranoid and unjustified take on web monitoring services. My website is "of a Fractal Nature".

Yours truly, gayla c.

And then google analytics turns all that info over to the illegal snoops in the nwo government. Not me, baby, not me.

would this also work for sites that automatically direct you to the version of the website for the country you're in? i'm trying to get around this on several companies sites - but can only access north american sites. how do i block the site from knowing where i am?

I don't think this prevents a website from finding out what your IP address is, and that is probably how they are deciding what country you are in. You COULD use a proxy server to hide your true IP address, but you would then appear to be in whatever country contains that proxy server.

What are you trying to do anyway, download some strong encryption or get a european DVD player or something?

The other thing is that there are other companies that do similar tracking of people to Google, and blocking Google Analytics doesn't really do anything about them.

I'm with the 3rd commenter. BFD about nothing, really. now that I track things on my company's sites I realize just how harmless this data is, and if anything, how HELPFUL it is to the visitors.

You wouldn't believe the improvements I've had our UI and Content teams simply by using site monitoring traffic results. All of our users have benefitted.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I couldn't tell you a name or address of a single person that has ever visited our site. People are just too paranoid.

If you're fortunate enough to have your own nameserver, setting up a zone for the domain will effectively block all tracking.

It can also be helpful if you want to learn more about what this is, how common it is and what is actually being tracked.

Personally, I set up my zone with no MX records, a www record and a ssl record pointing to my own server. Thus any activity should show up in my logs. Also, if I was really curious I could set up forms on said server, logging any data the .js is submitting.

Ahh, I forgot to mention this in my last comment;

Blocking on the nameserver is only done once, and then affects any and all computers using it. There is no need to set up each computer individually.

It's astonishing to see how quickly Google went from considering themselves a socially-responsible company to being more evil than Microsoft ever was. All it took was a stock price that needs regular watering. I'm happy to see these kinds of blocking techniques emerging and hope that someone will eventually consolidate them into a package, sort of like antivirus and antispyware packages.

This is a GREAT tip, and there's an aspect to it that nobody is exploring, here. Google performance, both on it's analytics servers and it's search servers has been extremely BAD, here in mid-2007. How many times have you seen, "Waiting for www.googleanalytics.com" at the bottom of your browser??? I don't much mind a site tracking it's hits, but I do mind having my valuable time wasted, waiting for a server that isn't adding anything to the actual content of what I'm loading.

I blocked it out, purely as a performance issue. It's amazing how much of a difference it makes! Update your hosts file with this. You'll be stunned!

I do not want to be part of any statistic, my surfing habits are none of your business. And you tediously tracking every link I click on @ your site so you can improve your advertising techniques to "better serve your users", is pathetic. I have a problem with trackers/advertisers because some images they use could potentially be loaded with code that would glean as much personal info and my surfing habits as my browser's security settings will permit and quite frankly that info is none of your business.
"People are just too paranoid."
-morals take a hike when tracking statistical data of web surfers browsing into a site with high traffic, (can ya hear the cha-ching); crammed with blinking ads, and waiting for all the advertisers to load as someone alluded to earlier is very annoying. I can't focus when reading an article or posts while there are bitmaps and flash animations flashing at me all over the place, just dying to grab my attention.I leave and never come back. Actually thank Firefox and all their add ons, which has rendered most advertising harmless and non-existent from my experience with it. Mozilla ROCKS, keep it up dudes!!
-Peace

If I could not track the performance of my ads I would be out of business.

If I could not track the performance of visitors on my websites, it will decimate my business.

Google Analytics is 100% annonymous from the webmasters perspecitve. It is all about trends and segments, not people.

If I have a site which informs you about a product and sells you that product then you are either there to find out about that product or buy it. Google Analytics tells me if my information is any good and if people want to buy my products.

Why is it such a threat to you that I want to improve my marketing so it gets seen by you if you are a relevant target, improve my information (make it more useful to you) and then make it easier for you to buy my products. Or are you another activist that thinks globalization is 100% a bad idea and carbon emmissions are the only factor in global warming?

I can usually guess whom the person is by their browser etc. But that's only with other facts. Here I've seen complaints about invasive tech. If you haven't learned to live a double life I suggest learning now. Humans will always be smarter than machines. But machines make growing tired a moot point. Transparency has its advantages.

Thank You for this great tip ! I use google for search and gmail for e-mail but I don;t like when I am tracked in any way, I am not a statistic, and I do not want to be one. As for webmasters: If I like some site and fell that I should comment and sugest an improvement - I will tell you, no need to track me (anyone), If you want to ask me something about my surfing experience - please do, make a voteing poll ! ;) no need to run scripts from my computer. You wouldn't like me to run scripts from your computer for any reason would you ? I guess not...

cheers,

Ludak

I help manage a web site and all we need is server side stats to let us know what is happening and what's being viewed. That's a load of bullcrap about "presentation" to the boots you lick for job security. Justify porn time much?

Seems people who design websites get confused and think they can also eye-candy people's minds as well. The only real legit reason for the tactics is $ which is always the bottomline. I se this topic pop up here and there and those who defend it always talk about how they went with a report they read off of logs others created and present it to some boss so they can make more $$$

My advice would be get better skillz and you wont have to watch logs like a crack fiend just to justify your position in the company :)

I'm just tired of watching the bandwidth overhead. Every site I hit follows up with the 'downloading from www.google-analytics.com' garbage.

Even Google has fallen prey to the adage, 'the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry'.

Ad's By Google can also be blocked from most pages you visit by adding googlesyndication.com to your hosts file or router configuration settings.

There is far too much advertising on the web today and as far as I am concerned, it is none of Google's (or anyone elses) business what I do when I am surfing the internet.

All of that information they glean from tracking is used for one and one purpose only, to make money.

And yes, I use tracking too. That is why I know EXACTLY how dangerous it can be if it is abused.

Monitoring one's own website is one thing; anyone browsing the web ought to be aware that this is possible and normal, and accept that before using the web. What is more disurbing about Google Analytics is the cross-site tracking it permits Google to perform and which you as a Google Analytics user never see the results of.

If all they did were provide a useful tool for webmasters there would be no problem. The problem is that your users pay for your "free" tool in the loss of their privacy as they move across sites on the web.

Have you ever heard of scroogle.org?

Hmm, let me nip off and check what data is actually logged.

bit vague. I'd guess it uses IP addresses and what page they're looking at.

OK so they got your IP. You wanna be secure? Umm. Well, when you're browsing normally, you plain aren't. I'd worry about the NSC, MI6 & CIA installing massive racks at your ISP's exchanges. That's surveillance.

So you want to be secure? VPN, Proxy, encrypt, TOR, 6/4 protocol they're all fairly tough, but nothing the NSC can't crack. Why not sent a parcel with a statue in it with cyphered note hidden in it. That's what I'd do if I were a terrorist. Bit of a slow transfer, but so is TOR. But I'm not a terrorist, and I don't need to encrypt or befuddle. My goal is to create a public, and legible message, and to do so efficiently. I think Bush is a ^(*&^, and so do 10,000,000 others on the web, and we all write quite freely about it. We don't set off bombs, and public opinion is, well, public. Generally in the US in Florida they wouldn't know too much about 3rd world debt being a major underpinner of the $, no gold in Fort Knox, or about strategic CIA political coups such as funding/training Pinochet, Pol Pot and the Taliban. This just got logged. But what will they do with the data mountain? How high up the list is this? Will they show up at my house? If they do, I will offer them tea.

It would appear that google analytics shows site administrators bulk statistics, and that you can't investigate the individual user in any way whatsoever.

YES you are being watched. What, are you dumb? Of course you are. And you can't and won't get around it anywhichway. Maybe unplug that DSL router. That'd do it.

NO it isn't google analytics. That's for site administrators to administrate their sites, and improve the design.