As a follow up to yesterdays post about social buttons on this site and their proliferation in general. I’m going to lay it out clearly what on this site is tracking you and why, hell I’ll even see if I can find out a way for you to opt out of being tracked.

1. Google Analytics – To the uninitiated this is on like every website out there, tracking what page you went on, how long you stayed, where else in the site you when after that. Nothing but a little counting.

Wanna opt out: a little beta button for you (looks like it works).
Why you shouldn’t: if website owners, don’t know what you are reading, or if your visiting at all then why would they keep the site open? or how would they know to write more about what you’re reading? In fact, ad funded websites, really do need to know how many of you visit their site, it part of their sales pitch to advertisers. The clever ones even use this kind of analytical data to optimise the site on how you collectively use it, to make it better and more interesting.

2. GoSquared – A little like Google Analytics, except with real time data, meaning I know when you hit the site as soon as you, well, hit the site. Soon to be coming to Google Analytics so that should be interesting to see how they cope with that.

Wanna opt out: Well I’ve asked them, so will update if there is away.
UPDATE: No way at the moment except blocking your browser from accepting cookies. They do say it is something they will look into, see.
Why you shouldn’t: I like watching what you are doing. If you are someone I know, I have fun figuring out if it is you, then let you know all about what you are up to, until of course you leave, then I just get sad.

3. Disqus – The über commenting platform of choice. As for tracking this is what they say on their privacy page,”We use “persistent cookies” to save your registration ID and login password for future logins to the Site; and we use “session ID cookies” to enable certain features of the Site, to better understand how you interact with the Site and to monitor aggregate usage and web traffic routing on the Site.” I’d say up reflection it’s fairly innocuous. The other route for me to go with commenting would be facebook own platform (John Battelle write more on why he chose Disqus over facebook, pretty good read, especially when you add the comments). I have me a cookie stored for them so that I stay logged in all over the interwebs, allowing me to add my 2 cents at a moments notice.

Wanna opt out: Don’t accept cookies in your browser – how? Google it.
Why you shouldn’t: It’s a lot of work for no gain.

I think that is about it…looks like this site is fairly clean, no ads, no social buttons, a little bit of analytics but other than that stick around here, it’s a pretty safe place to be.