CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptsessionbrowsercookies
user406905
user406905

Reputation: 1418

how can i track users without cookies

ok... im looking to have a good round of brainstorming here...

say i was google... the adword/adsense/analytics division. i would be getting a little worried about the future, when users start to disable cookies (or at least delete them on a regular basis), use private browsing, roam on multiple devices. how could google alternatively track users without the benefits of cookies?

some ideas to get started (please elaborate on these and any others):

-track users using some other persistent local/client side storage

-use user-agent string fingerprinting

-test cache response - if user 304's an image, they were here

-track mac address

-any random/out of the box ideas?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 7467

Answers (5)

maga
maga

Reputation: 720

  1. Information about browser/system/display through js and IP of cause;
  2. Java Applet provide a lot of info about user;
  3. Flash also (e.g. installed fonts);
  4. Modern browsers also provide a lot of information about users (e.g. installed extensions) and provide new ways to save information on client-side (e.g. html5 storage). altogether: http://panopticlick.eff.org/

Upvotes: 1

user180100
user180100

Reputation:

Take a look at http://samy.pl/evercookie/, it's a JS API for ultra-persistent cookies, but you can take idea(s) from it's mechanism to find storage for your data.

Upvotes: 3

T.J. Crowder
T.J. Crowder

Reputation: 1074138

If your site requires user tracking, then I would have it fail to work if cookies are disabled. Then focus your time and effort on making it a fantastic site for the vast majority of your visitors, and don't worry about the ones who, for whatever reason, have made the explicit decision to disable cookies.

(Made this a CW answer because this is a subjective question that's likely to be closed.)

Upvotes: 1

Tarun
Tarun

Reputation: 5514

you can always resort back to good ol way, the HIT COUNTER.

  1. on page, use tag and link to external image on your server
  2. on your server, when image is fetched, redirect it to php script through .htaccess and record header info about device id etc. {similar code as disabling the hotlinking of image}
  3. Now you have all info, use php_session() to keep a track of it

you can always use js for the same purpose, but using tag will ensure that js is not required and the script will run on all browsers

Upvotes: 0

D.C.
D.C.

Reputation: 15588

I think you could do it using custom urls. You would basically ecrypt a cookie and attach it as part of the URL you send to the browser. When it returns, your web server would be smart enough to decode it and track whoever sent it.

I believe the Spring framework can do this in fact.

Upvotes: 2

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