Privacy Policy
We use the tool Simple Analytics to collect information that is necessary for simple analytics only, and unlike other analytics tools, we thus don’t collect more than absolutely necessary. Here is a list of what we do and don’t collect from your visitors.
Cookies
In line with the nature of the AlgoSoc research programme, we care a great deal about the privacy of the AlgoSoc website visitors. We have therefore NOT set any cookies (or used similar technologies).
IP addresses
We also do NOT collect or store IP addressed. We drop the IP address from every single request.
Unique views
We DO collect and store whether visitors are unique. But whereas most analytical tools use cookies or IP addresses to see if a visitor has visited a website in the past, Simple Analytics allows us to detect unique visits based on the hostname of the referrer of the page. When a user comes from one domain to another, their browser shares the pervious domain with the next. If the current page’s domain is the same as the one in the referrer, we know it’s a non-unique visit. In other words, our collecting of data on unique visitors is entirely compatible with all existing privacy laws, including GDPR. We therefore do not need your consent.
Read more on how Simple Analytics registers unique page views.
Time stamps
We also DO collect and store timestamps. We do this because these stamps allow us to analyze changes in the website’s performance over various lengths of time.
We also DO collect and store user agents, but only for counting operating systems, device types, and browsers. But we anonymize the user agent string. In some browsers we don’t collect browser name and operating system name with the user agent, but via the user agent client hints.
Read more on how Simple Analytics truncates detailed version numbers.
Country data
We DO collect and story country data. But in contrast to most analytical tools, Simple Analytics allows us to collect countries not based on IP addresses, but to collect them based on the visitors time zone. This way, we don’t have to touch your IP address to define your country. Every country has their own time zone, and modern devices automatically update the time zone when the device travels. The time zone is limited to a country, so we can’t get data about a city or region within a country.
Read more on visitor country measuring
Language
We DO collect and store the language of visitors. Devices are set to a certain language, and we collect the language of the device being used by visitors. But advanced users can get this data out of our APIs. Some languages are used in different regions. We therefore also store the region of the language. But again, this data is not linked to a person or combined with personal data.
ID’s
The DO collect data in relation to data point ID’s, page ID’s, and session ID’s. This data is needed for analyzing the time spend on a page, to link multiple events, and to use sequential events. Again, please rest assure that these ID’s are not linked to a person or personal data. Instead, it’s linked to only a page view, page, or session. Also, the ID’s will all be reset if you reload a page.
Read more about ID’s.
URLs
We DO partially collect and partially store URLs. That is, we collect and store only the first part of a URL, that is the protocol, hostname, and pathname.
Referrers
Referrers typically answer the question “where did this visitor come from?”. Simple Analytics enables us to check the source of a website user in two ways: 1) we store the referrer in the same way we store URLs (see above); 2) we check the source of the customer with UTM-parameters (see below).
UTM-parameters
We DO collect and store UTM-codes. These are bits of text that can be added to a link to tell our analytics tool Simple Analytics a bit more information about each link. They are important mostly because they tell you where traffic to your website is coming from (e.g., from social media, blog posts, emails, etc). Please note that UTM-parameters are not privacy invasive, as they are being used for groups of visitors, and not individuals.
Device dimensions
We also DO collect the dimension of a users browser window and the device dimensions, as it allows us to get insight into the most popular screen sizes, which is useful for making the our website work great on all screens, from phones and tables to desktops, etc.
Time on page
We DO collect and store how long a page is viewed, as this is an important metric for measuring how engaged you as a visitor are with our content.
Read more on time on page.
Scrolled percentage
Wo DO collect and store how far a visitor scrolls on the page.
Script settings
We DO send script settings along with the page view, as to identify the embed script and check if the page view is not coming from a robot.
Do Not Track
By default, we do NOT collect or story any data at all if a visitor has ‘Do Not Track’ enabled. We never track anyway, but by default we thus also ignore visits with Do Not Track enabled and do not add these visitors to the simple analytics we do collect.
