Anonymize IP address enabled by default

  • Resolved aglyons

    (@aglyons)


    4 years, 8 months ago

    I just went through about an hour of troubleshooting trying to determine why analytics was showing my own traffic when I filter out my IP.

    The problem was found to be in the default config of the analytics connection inside Sitekit. Once the connection to analytics has been made, you are returned to the dashboard but, there are other settings that are turned on by default. Anonymize IP addresses is one of those defaults. When this is on, IP based filters WILL NOT WORK.

    This must have been a recent modification of the plugin as the filters used to work just fine.

    I should add that I have analytics tracking in Tag Manager and that variable was not set. I added that variable and set it to false but that is overridden by Sitekit.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • @aglyons thanks for your report. To confirm, which version of the plugin were you on when you noticed this?

    Thread Starter aglyons

    (@aglyons)

    v1.5.0

    @aglyons thanks so much for the confirmation. We’re investigating this. Could you tell us the following:

    1) Do you additionally have tracking for logged-in users excluded in Site Kit?

    2) Is the view with the IP filter configured also in Site Kit?

    3) From which reports in Analytics did you notice the discrepancy?

    We really appreciate your report and look forward to looking into this further.

    @aglyons I’m following up on your support topic. Could you provide the additional information above? We’re happy to look into this further for you.

    Thread Starter aglyons

    (@aglyons)

    1) Do you additionally have tracking for logged-in users excluded in Site Kit?
    Logged in users are excluded in SK

    2) Is the view with the IP filter configured also in Site Kit?
    YES, The view connected has the filter by IP address enabled

    3) From which reports in Analytics did you notice the discrepancy?
    Realtime view. I can literally watch myself browse my site.

    We really appreciate your report and look forward to looking into this further.

    Again, I will say that this is a problem with the default Sk settings. I should also add that Optimize does notice that Tag Manager is installed and injecting the scripts for it which disables that connection from adding the code. It appears that the Analytics portion of SK does not do this which can end up duplicating tracking code.

    @aglyons thanks for your reply and these details. We’ll follow up with more information as soon as we have it.

    I should also add that Optimize does notice that Tag Manager is installed and injecting the scripts for it which disables that connection from adding the code. It appears that the Analytics portion of SK does not do this which can end up duplicating tracking code.

    Are you referring to the Analytics tag for Google Tag Manager? If so, yes you are correct. It is something that is on our radar, and we’re scoping out improvements for the feature. The current recommendation is to choose to use either Site Kit’s snippet or the Tag Manager implementation. The data dashboards can be configured manually in the settings when opting for the latter. Thanks again for your feedback.

    @aglyons thanks for your patience. For background, the anonymize IP option was added in version 1.1.4 of the plugin. The option is toggled on by default given that users are required in some countries (EU countries for example) to anonymize the IP addresses of their visitors.

    With that said, IP filters can be affected given the way IP Anonymization works. This document describes how anonymization works thoroughly. Toward the end, note that the last octet of the user IP address is set to zero when the request comes into Analytics. Depending on how the IP filter is configured, the masked IP may not be recognizable.

    Again, your feedback has been helpful for us as we work on improvements to Site Kit.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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