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Anatomy of Google analytics cookies

devblog.eduhub.nl

30 points by wasigh · 6 comments

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3 threads
CWIZO

Since Google is so keen on improving the speed of the internet (and good for them for that) I'm looking forward to the day when they'll only use one cookie for all their tracking (if that's even possible). GA is, by Google's standards, a speed hog right now, and Page speed always complains about it ...

dude_abides

Just wondering: Why doesn't a webserver encrypt the cookie value with a server-side key? This way, the information in the cookie (timestamps, pageviews, number of sessions etc.) can be safe from wireshark sniffers.

  • calloc

    That would have to be done on Google's end, that is not something webmasters using Google Analytics are able to do by themselves.

    • dude_abides

      Yep. I'm wondering why Google, in this case, wouldn't encrypt the value stored in its cookie. Is there any technical reason other than laziness?

      • calloc

        I believe the cookies are set and manipulated by JavaScript, as such I'm not even sure it would be a good idea...

toddh

Nice, I always wondered how they worked.

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