Voluntary Analytics

Status

Evolving draft

Abstract

This document describes a mechanism for cooperative we analytics that respects the will of the user and provides the publisher a simple way of requesting browsing data.

Introduction

Web Analytics is currently a battle field. Users try to protect themselves from permanent invasion with ad and tracker blockers while publishers resort to ever deeper subterfuges and illegal practices to track and extract value from users without their knowledge. The European Union first tried to tackle this first with the misguided "cookie law" and more recently with a comprehensive personal data regulation (GDPR) which a few good actors follow to their own disadvantage and most either ignore or wilfully disrespect with consent requests diametrically opposed to the letter and spirit of GDPR.

The current state shows while a regulatory component is essential it is not sufficient to ensure a fair playing field and a good experience to users. The hostile stance by the industry and User Agents relegating themselves to defence via wilfully breaking site functionality results in a poor, confusing and not effectively protected browsing experience.

Blocking is a blunt instrument which while protecting the user deprives good actors of useful and reasonable analytics over published content. The Web should provide users and publishers with a cooperative way to share viewership data under the control of the data owner.

Declarative approach

The main paradigm of the Web is declarative while the current web analytics technologies are imperative. This impedance mismatch causes the User Agent not to be able to represent the User and instead be a computing subtract for the publisher. This specification introduces a new HTML tag <analytics> which declaratively requests the UA to submit specific data to the publisher. The UA intersects the information requested with the User's expressed share policy and submits the result. The UA may also make the request and response visible to the user.

Usage

Adoption

Bootstraping the ecosystem leverages Web Components so that users can extend their User Agents via scripts and publishers can inject shims for the new tags. As such, tag names are provisional and compatible with customComponents.

Tag

Include the <analytics> tag in the page. The User Agent depending on its configured policy will ignore or process the tag. Processing the tag will cause the User Agent to POST the analytics object to the to URL and depending on its configuration prompt the user for confirmations or not. The <analytics> tag may contain other tags to request additional information, which the User Agent may or not relay to the requesting URL.

User Agents may chose different representations for <analytics>. Examples include no display at all, showing a badge on the status bar, a popup requesting policy confirmation or a block in the page. In the last case the <analytics> tag should be rendered as a <div> in the flow and cannot be styled.

<analytics-beacon to="https://example.com">
	<persistent-tracker />
	<basic-demographics />
  <short-note>Please do not block us, we like to know about you</short-note>
</analytics-beacon>

Data elements

persistentTracker

The publisher requests the User Agent to generate and store a persistent ID which should be submitted upon processing each request for this domain. The User Agent may or not honour this request. As such it is not necessary to prescribe exact interpretation to domain. The User Agent should follow the two rightmost hostname labels convention.

basicDemographics

The publisher requests the User submit demographic information such as

city and country of residence
age
sex

The User Agent may submit any subset of the fields.

short-note

A short text the User Agent may display as part of rendering the tag.

Extension

The format is fully extensible with new elements.

Analytics Object

The User Agent submits a JSON object of the form

{
	"basic": {
		"from-url": "full url of the page including the tag",
		"session-id": "volatile session ID as determined by the User Agent",
		"user-agent": "browser version string",
		"browser-version": "chrome/53",
		"rendering-engine": "blink",
		"os": "android",
		"platform": "mobile"	
	},
	"persistent-tracker": {
		"id": "as determined by the User Agent"
	},
	"basic-demographics": {
		"city": "gotham",
		"country": "gilead",
		"sex": "x",
		"age": null
	}
}

Fields the User Agent elects not to submit must have value null and not "falsy" values such as false, 0 or ''.

Other tracking methods

User Agents should treat any other attempts to collect User data as hostile and should actively prevent them as per User policy. Publishers not following this specification have no expectation of cooperation by the User Agent.

Copyright notice

Created by Carlos Morgado in 2019.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Included examples and samples are in the public domain ("CC0") unless otherwise noted.

chbm/voluntary-analytics