Ask HN: How do you do website tracking without feeling you're selling your soul?

PostHog: https://github.com/PostHog/posthog if you want to deploy it yourself and https://posthog.com if you want the SaaS.

I was using Avodocs (https://www.avodocs.com) to produce a privacy policy for our MLOps platform, https://iko.ai, but they didn't have PostHog in the list for the "Analytics" section, and they assumed that doing analytics implied sending user data to a third party site or something.

I tweeted at them and they were lightning fast in reaching out and adding PostHog to the options of the the privacy policy template. It's really cool: https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/144733750656389120...

I built UXWizz[0] for this exact purpose, being able to get as much data as needed without affecting your users. Not only you do not send the data to third parties (so your users won't be targeted by ads just because they visited your website) but you can also choose exactly what data you want to track (eg. track their real IP or not, track their city location or only the country, etc.).

[0]: https://www.uxwizz.com/

I assume your concern is invading your users' privacy. In which case, here are two sites with lists and information regarding privacy-focused analytics options:

- https://creativerly.com/google-analytics-alternatives/

- https://privacyfocusedanalytics.info/

You mean like website visitor statistics or something else?

For myself: I only do the most basic AWStats-style review these days. It feels more like reviewing basic overviews of server logs.

For others I work with: I offer them ethics-based processes and training and bring it up when appropriate. It's important to have some structure around this process and generally I find that people appreciate it. Nobody wants to be big brother if there's another way to get what they want or need.

Using https://simpleanalytics.com/, i guess its has most of the functionalities plausible has, but I know they don't track IP-addresses at all and I don't know about plausible.

I prefer GoatCounter, but Plausible seems good too.