On this blog I use Matomo for analytics. Matomo is an open-source alternative to Google Analytics. I’m not the biggest fan of Google and I don’t really want them collecting my reader’s and friend’s data. However, I am curious to see how many people are reading my posts. So I decided to use a self-hosted Matomo server for this purpose. The only person who sees this data is me. Just me. I have made sure to setup some features to anonymize the data that I do collect. I have anonymized visitors' IP addresses by 3 bytes. So, for example, instead of me seeing 192.168.1.234, I can only see 192.xxx.xxx.xxx. I have replaced user id’s with pseudonyms. This replaces personally identifiable information (such as email addresses) with a pseudonym. Matomo also respects your browser’s “Do Not Track” setting and I made sure that if you have JavaScript disabled that there is no way of tracking you, at least on my blog. Honestly, the only reason I’m using analytics at all is just so I can see if people are reading my posts. I put a lot of work into these posts and I just want to know that others are enjoying them too.
That being said, I know not everyone wants me to have said data so I am adding this opt out page for those that would rather not be tracked. No hard feelings if you choose to opt out, I know your privacy is important to you. I feel exactly the same way.