Setting Up A Privacy-Respecting Analytics System

I wished to implement analytics on my blog for sometime. Analytics will help me track how many people are visiting my blog and what pages are the most interesting for visitors. I don’t prefer to employ Google Analytics due to privacy considerations, so I set out to a privacy-respecting solution. Enter Fathom Lite.

Fathom Lite

Fathom Analytics is a simpler and more privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics. Fathom respects the privacy of your users and does not collect any personally identifiable information. All while giving you the information you need about your site, so you can make smarter decisions about your design and content.

Pros

• No collection of personal information.
• Use of anonymised cookies.
• Minimal statistical information provided to the site owner.

Cons

• The open source version (Fathom Lite) uses an anonymous cookie.

Self-Hosting Fathom Lite

There is a dead simple tutorial on their GitHub repository for those of you who want to self-host Fathom. I run a private instance to ensure full control over the data and because honestly, $14/month is a bit too expensive for a personal blog.

I think this is a win-win situation. I will receive basic statistics about my blog visitors, and my visitors will have their privacy intact.

Are you setting up analytics for a website? Use a solution that respects your visitors privacy.