I just ditched Google Analytics. You’re welcome!

No more Google tracking code or cookies. I'm opting my site out of the mass surveillance.

JEREMY R. HAMMOND

One of my recent research projects has been to investigate the ties between Google's parent company, Alphabet, and the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

During the lockdown madness, Google manipulated its search algorithms to silence opposing views and feature information from so-called "public health authorities" who lied about everything. The company's subsidiary YouTube likewise served the state and Big Pharma by imposing content guidelines that prohibited true information that was contrary to the authoritarian agenda.

Alphabet recently confirmed in a letter to Congress that the Biden administration was so crazed in its efforts to silence dissent that it pressured Google to suspend YouTube channels for posting content that didn't even violate YouTube's already, shall we say, "accommodative" policies.

Alphabet told Congress that it did not succumb to the White House's pressure to censor truth, that all it did was enforce its own content policies.

Which policies, you see, Google has since updated.

And, you see, Alphabet has such benevolent intent that it promised to do a review and restore accounts for users who were suspended for posting content that wouldn't violate YouTube's current policies.

That was Alphabet's way of tacitly admitting to Congress that its previous content policies prohibited users from posting factually accurate information.

The narrative Alphabet tried to spin is that, yes, there was censorship, but it was all the Biden administration's doing, and we refused to go along with it.

The truth is that Google has been censoring truth since well before COVID-19.

And it wasn't because the government was dictating to Google that it should do that.

I knew from my own prior research that Alphabet was invested in the pharmaceutical industry—but during my more recent deep dive, I've been blown away by just how far its tentacles reach.

The picture that emerges is not merely that of Google's censorship being explainable by Alphabet's deep ties to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

The bigger picture is that Alphabet, Inc. is a data mining company whose investments and initiatives could be or are being used to advance the agenda of government surveillance and control over the population.

That includes, of course, the use of deceit to manufacture consent for public vaccine policies—or when deception fails to persuade, the use of coercion. The government doesn't oversee the vaccine industry; it is the vaccine industry.

The breadth and depth of what I found got me thinking about my own website's reliance on third party tools, including the use of the ubiquitous traffic monitoring tool Google Analytics.

I understand the need for such a tool. It's important for website owners to be able to understand how visitors use their site. How did the visitor find the site? What page(s) did they view? Did they subscribe to the newsletter? Did they buy something? Etcetera.

By understanding what is and isn't working, website owners are better able to provide visitors with the things they are looking for.

Tracking user data for website analytics is not inherently a bad thing. It doesn't necessarily pose a risk to privacy.

Nor does the use of tracking URLs or cookies.

How annoying would it be, for example, if you had to log in again every time you visited a site for which you have an account and visit often?

Instead, you can just have the site remember you and spare you the time-consuming nuisance.

And how does that work?

Well, the website basically asks your browser to save a string of text to a database file on your device, and your browser then decides whether to accept that request or not based on your privacy settings and permissions.

That browser database entry doesn't contain your username and password—just a string of characters that serve as a unique identifier. Then, when you visit the site again, it can recognize that ID as being linked to your user account and identify you as a logged in user.

That database entry is what's known as a "cookie".

(Nope, I have no idea why it's called that. Feel free to let me know or have fun guessing in the comments.)

So, yeah, cookies can make our lives easier and are also not an inherently bad thing.

On its own, it's not personally identifiable data—but when conglomerated with other user data and shared across multiple websites or a wider network, it can be used in a way to potentially reveal your identity to third parties.

Google Analytics also collects your IP address, which likewise does not by itself personally identify you, but it can potentially be connected to your other online activities, which together could potentially tie your IP to information like your email or home address.

As disclosed in my website's privacy policy, I'd been using Google Analytics for a long time simply because I didn't really have a practical alternative. I needed to understand visitors' behavior to make data-driven decisions about how to deliver what they came to my site to look for. And there just weren't any affordable alternatives to Google's free tool.

I've never liked Google Analytics not only because of the privacy concerns it raises but also because it is hard to use effectively, basically requiring you to hire a web developer to set up and manage it for you (which I never did because of that affordability problem).

Well, I am pleased to report that, as of yesterday, I no longer have the Google Analytics tracking code on my website. Motivated by my recent investigation into Alphabet's conflicting interests, I sought and discovered an alternative solution.

It's called Independent Analytics, which is a WordPress plugin enabling you to self-host your website analytics.

There's no tracking code to implement into your webpages. There are no cookies. There is no sharing of data with any third parties.

I've updated my privacy policy accordingly to note the heightened protection afforded to my website visitors' privacy. (And it's the most legitimately informative and easy to understand privacy policy you'll ever read, I guarantee. Or your money back! Heck, you might even enjoy reading it.)

And Independent Analytics is so much quicker and easier than Google Analytics to get set up how you want it to provide meaningful and actionable data.

If you have a WordPress site and want an analytics solution other than Google's, I highly recommend checking it out.

I'm such a fan already of this plugin—for which you can buy a lifetime license at an astonishingly affordable price—that I immediately signed up for their affiliate program to help support the initiative and get the word out about it.

So, you and everyone else reading this can appreciate the enhanced privacy you now have when visiting my site, and if you also happen to be the owner of a website using WordPress for content management, you now know about a fantastic Google Analytics alternative.

And if you end up purchasing the Pro version, you'll also be helping to support my independent journalism.

Learn more about Independent Analytics.

The mission of its developers to provide website owners with a self-hosted and privacy-friendly solution totally aligns with my own aims as a self-publishing journalist seeking to remain totally independent while being as censorship-proof as possible and protecting my users from mass surveillance.

And speaking of that, I am also pleased to offer my readers access to a special online training, "Top 5 Steps to Exit the Surveillance State & Protect Yourself Online". This will be presented by privacy expert Glenn Meder on Thursday, November 6, at 8 pm US Eastern Time.

Register for the free privacy protection webinar.

And stay tuned for my forthcoming reporting about how Alphabet's data mining operations are tied to Big Pharma, biotech, and government surveillance.

In Truth & Liberty,

Jeremy

P.S. -- My work is reader supported. That's how I stay independent. So far this quarter, 50 readers have contributed to my 4th quarter fundraiser, bringing me 23% of the way toward my goal. We're now into November, so that means I'm quite behind where I should be to reach my funding goal.

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