We made our SaaS home page cookie-free

https://blog.leavemealone.app/no-more-cookies/

by jivings • 6 years ago

382 181 6 years ago

blog.leavemealone.app

jivings9• 6 years ago

TL:DR; We set out to have a no-cookie homepage. Replaced Google Analytics, Crisp Chat and Cloudflare with privacy friendly alternatives!

gcatalfamo• 6 years ago

How do you retarget on potentially interested customers?

bochoh• 6 years ago

I think the whole point of being privacy focused is that you don't retarget and your product sells by its own merits.

mrweasel• 6 years ago

How effective is retargeting? I’m understand that it varys from business to business, but from what I saw 5 years ago in consumer electronic, gaming and toys, it’s not really going to be a significate revenue source.

The retargeting most of us are see is the failed kind where you’re trying to sell a fridge to the person who already ordered one two days ago, and you’re the person who sold it, but your retargeting partner does actually support registering a purchases.

criddell2• 6 years ago

Just out of curiosity, how important is live chat? I don't think I've ever had a good experience using a site's chat function.

jivings9• 6 years ago

We have a rather difficult onboarding process and users often message via the chat for help.

For the homepage I'd say visitors message rarely so it is less useful. That said, the ones that do are usually the same who convert as they are already fairly qualified leads and just want a little extra info before they sign up.

stjohnswarts2• 6 years ago

Back when I was doing web stuff for clients I got a lot of help through hostgator chat function and it was great. It all depends on how knowledgeable the person on the other side is. The medium is fine in and of itself.

villgax• 6 years ago

The cloudflare cookie still persists.

speedgoose3• 6 years ago

I wish cloudfare could allow removing this cookie. I'm willing to pay for that feature.

dkyc• 6 years ago

That cookie can be disabled on Cloudflare's Enterprise plan [0] (which, to be fair, starts at like $60k a year).

[0] https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170156-U...

3pt14159• 6 years ago

How would they know that you're you without the cookie?

jivings9• 6 years ago

It's currently still there on the blog site because I was worried that HN would smash my server and haven't moved it over to BunnyCDN yet ^^

kaszanka• 6 years ago

I wish you luck on your move -- I love to see people dropping Cloudflare's MITM service that mistreats Tor users (among others).

Jsharm• 6 years ago

Naively did not realise using cloudflare as a cdn meant subjecting users to cookies. I don't have a consent banner... Does Netlify?

donbrae3• 6 years ago

Netlify doesn't seem to have a consent banner but sites hosted on it don't set cookies, despite using Cloudflare (at least that's my experience hosting a blog on it).

iruoy• 6 years ago

Netlify doesn't use cloudflare. Their DNS[1] is managed by NS1 and they host their websites on the edge[2] instead of using a cdn.

[1] https://ns1.com/blog/netlify-leverages-ns1-to-improve-perfor...

[2] https://www.netlify.com/products/edge/

wongarsu3• 6 years ago

At least under EU cookie laws and GDPR you shouldn't need a consent banner for Cloudflare cookies, as they provide essential functions (for availability and security) and don't track users. You might have to mention them and their purpose in your privacy policy though.

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170156-U... goes in some detail what the cookies do and (more importantly here) what they don't do.

ancymon3• 6 years ago

You might be kind of wrong. I think you don't need consent. But the cookie law still requires notification banner (which is basically the same thing). That's because cookie usage by itself (no matter the purpose) requires notification.

danieleguia2• 6 years ago

nice write-up with good suggestions on how to accomplish the no cookie page

danieleguia2• 6 years ago

Nice write-up on how to make a cookie-free page. Thanks

eli3• 6 years ago

But it's possible to hit this button again and re-enable Cloudflare forwarding temporarily if we find ourselves under attack, so I figure this is a good option.

Plan to redeploy your production server to a new IP address too since the attacker will still be able to hit it directly.

Waterluvian• 6 years ago

Can you not just reject or ignore all connections not coming from cloud flare? Or does that still do damage during a ddos?

jgrahamc• 6 years ago

That doesn't help if your pipe to the Internet is full (think Gbps) or if the router/switch can't process packets fast enough (think Mpps).

tarjei• 6 years ago

I've been thinking of trying to combine self-hosted analytics and adding ad info in the urls of ads so I can track if a user arrived at my site via an ad without divulging that to any third parties.

Has anyone tried something like that? Did it work? Obviously what you give up is retargeting but that may have to go anyhow.

patja• 6 years ago

I always thought this was a fairly common practice so you can verify you are getting the ad traffic you paid for.

hapidjus• 6 years ago

Isn't this basically UTM Tracking?

wongarsu3• 6 years ago

Tracking ads via URL parameters is pretty standard (utm parameters), and self-hosted matomo can be set to run without cookies. This means that some metrics can't be tracked [1]. The most impactful of those is attributing people to a campaign if come via an ad, view your website, but only convert after leaving and coming back some time later.

If you leave cookies enabled everything just works just just as you would expect, with full conversion tracking etc. Some ad services try to optimize ads according to tracking data you send them, which obviously doesn't work if you don't run their tracking code.

1: https://matomo.org/faq/general/faq_156/

marban• 6 years ago

I store the url param in a DB and rewrite the Url to a cleaned one via JS in case the user bookmarks the page.

romanovcode• 6 years ago

ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS

perlpimp• 6 years ago

Safari cannot open the page because too many redirects occurred.

jivings9• 6 years ago

I assume HN hug of death! It's back now.

stevage• 6 years ago

Urgh, the irony - can't open this page, because there is some problem to do with too many redirects. Which you can maybe fix by clearing cookies.

jivings9• 6 years ago

Ghost instance crashed, I assume HN hug of death! It's back now.

donbrae3• 6 years ago

Getting redirects too. The page on the Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20201103140506/https://blog.leave...

nwsm2• 6 years ago

I was recently tasked with making an "Accept our use of cookies" banner for our public site. Before that banner we did not store any cookies at all; now we have one to store their consent.

unfunco• 6 years ago

If you don't store cookies at all then you don't need the banner, you don't need consent to be doing nothing.

TonyTrapp2• 6 years ago

Try explaining that to the non-technical people the requirement came from.

reaperducer4• 6 years ago

If you don't store cookies at all then you don't need the banner, you don't need consent to be doing nothing.

That was his point. He was illustrating the absurdity he has to deal with.

mewpmewp26• 6 years ago

What if you might consider adding some analytics later down the road, but are afraid someone will forget about the cookie banner at that point?

Maybe the customer wants to not worry if some new developer is tasked with analytics and maybe this developer forgets about the cookie banner.

rustybolt• 6 years ago

I'll bite: So why did you need it in the first place?

nwsm2• 6 years ago

Eventually we'll add an analytics plugin and need the banner. But at the time it was one of those "every site has one" decisions from non-technical folks. Similar frustration with arbitrary password requirements on the same site.

ATsch3• 6 years ago

It's extra fun because there's really two options:

a) the cookies are necessary for technical reasons. This means you don't need to ask for permission

b) the cookies are for marketing, which means you must be able to decline without consequences

Half of the banners do neither of these things and are thus either unnecessary or insufficient.

eli3• 6 years ago

For GDPR or CCPA?

Angostura2• 6 years ago

b) the cookies are for marketing, which means you must be able to decline without consequences

Nope - 'decline' has to be the default assumption for GDPR compliance. You only need the banner if you want people to opt in.

alangibson2• 6 years ago

At least 90% of the banners I get hit with around the web are automatically not GDPR compliant because they require you to opt out. It's amazing to think of the effort that's been expended implementing them while still failing to follow the law.

I'd call it a legal fig leaf, but it doesn't cover up anything at all.

cuu508• 6 years ago

It's a legal face mask with the nose sticking out

swyx• 6 years ago

i could see an excellent webcomic being made out of this

reaperducer4• 6 years ago

Before that banner we did not store any cookies at all; now we have one to store their consent.

Some of the web sites I manage have sections in their Terms of Service outlining how we handle cookies, and store user login information.

These are web sites that store no cookies, and do not have user logins.

But whatever the legal department wants, the legal department gets.

When I feel generous, I chock it up to Legal future-proofing the situation. When I'm not, I call it trendchasing.

TeMPOraL2• 6 years ago

When I feel generous, I chock it up to Legal future-proofing the situation. When I'm not, I call it trendchasing.

In my even less charitable mood, I'd call it copy-pasting ToS templates to avoid doing work.

m1aw• 6 years ago

Is it necessary to get consent from the user about _cfduid?

From what I understand functional cookies are excluded from the consent banner.

achairapart2• 6 years ago

The problem with _cfduid is that it is essentially a third-party cookie (even if it's set on your own domain).

So I think you are still required to inform users of the cookie usage, the purpose of the cookies and link to the relevant Cloudflare privacy/cookie policies.

jivings9• 6 years ago

This is what I assumed too.

stjohnswarts2• 6 years ago

They wanted to get rid of cookies as much as possible as that's part of their business plan (privacy). So they found a better CDN that didn't use cookies at all, so I'd say they made out like a bandit.

distantsounds• 6 years ago

how to make a website sans cookies:

don't use cookies.

saved you all a click.

raxxorrax• 6 years ago

You could use localstorage and a script for setting/getting the info via xmlhttp. Technically not a cookie and there is nothing automatically send.

I think cookies are great if they weren't abused as much.

(not saying the site is using any alternative approaches, I think their ambition is laudable)

cseleborg2• 6 years ago

I believe localStorage is equivalent to cookies as far as the European cookie banner directive is concerned.

cseleborg2• 6 years ago

Well... turns out, it's not that easy. I, too, removed the cookies from my website [1] and was thrilled to finally get rid of the cookie banner, but had to jump through some hoops:

- It's a WooCommerce store. WooCommerce stores one persistent cookie to keep track of your cart. I had to hack up a little snippet of PHP code to turn that into a session cookie. It's not quite documented behavior, but the hack feels robust enough that I can live with it. (Sessions cookies are allowed, as per GDPR.)

- YouTube embeds had to go, as even their youtube-nocookie domain sets cookies (thanks, YT). Vimeo has a "dnt" option that seems close to what I want, but it still sets some ID in localStorage, which the GDPR views as equivalent to cookies in this regard. So my current workaround is to just have the video thumbnail and link to the proper video on YT, but that sucks because now my visitors leave the website.

- Replaced Google Analytics with self-hosted Matomo, carefully configured to not set cookies (it's not trivial), which now regularly brings my cheap hosted server to the limit ;-)

So even a relatively simple website that does little fancy is not easy to get free of cookies.

[1] https://dascask.com

tleb_• 6 years ago

Sessions cookies are allowed, as per GDPR.

Would you have a source? Reading through this page[0] I don't get the impression this is right. Session cookies are cookies nonetheless that can be used to identify users and if they are used that way, consent should be asked and given before usage.

[0] https://gdpr.eu/cookies/

Hnrobert42• 6 years ago

In case leavemealone.app is reading these messages, I will leave this here. I failed to sign up. After clicking the sign up button, the button began pulsing but did nothing more. When I tried reporting the failure via chat, nothing happened when I clicked send. After clicking send, I noticed that my initial chat message had been truncated halfway. I don’t know if these two failures are related.

I am using Firefox Focus on an iPhone 7 running iOS 14.1.

jivings9• 6 years ago

We're getting a bit smashed by HN traffic right now and server is running a little more slow than usual! I hope you check back in a little while.

volument7• 6 years ago

Cookies are not an issue for GDPR, it's all about respecting users' privacy. In fact you can freely store anonymous data to cookies, localStorage, and sessionStorage without issues. The problem comes when you are dealing with personally identifiable information such as permanent identifiers.

You definitely need a "cookie banner" when using Simple Analytics, Fathom, or Plausible. Any service that accesses the device information such as the URL needs a permission from the user according the ePrivacy directive.

We have consulted EU law specialists when building our upcoming analytics service that is as privacy-friendly as Simple Analytics, while still measuring important things like retention and conversions. More information:

https://volument.com/learn/data-privacy

AdriaanvRossum• 6 years ago

Founder of Simple Analytics [1] here. There is a lot of information around cookie banners that is just not true. For example cookies are not limited to the technology of cookies, it contains any piece of information that you can use the track a user. An IP address, localStorage, sessionStorage, ... You are allowed to add a functional cookie with a dark mode setting for example without a cookie banner. You can't use an analytics cookie without a cookie banner.

What you are sharing is simply not true and I will clarify. A cookie banner is required when you store PII data. This is personal identifiable information. This includes, but is not limited to an IP address, a cookie with an user identifier, ... You are free to collect data that is not part of this without a cookie banner. You are also referring to a URL as being device information, this is not device information but basically a page view. You are allowed to collect page views and URLs that a linked to this page views with a cookie banner.

You are describing retention for your business. That's only possible with a cookie banner. It makes perfect sense because you need to calculate retention somehow. If you can calculate retention and conversions you are tracking a user. So you need a cookie banner.

Cookie banners are also a thing that are implemented on the web in many wrong ways. You should always have a way to disable cookies. Just a "accept all cookies" is legally invalid under the GDPR. The e-Privacy was already in place before the GDPR and the GDPR is somewhat a clarification of it.

Simple Analytics does not use cookies and does not require a cookie banner. We don't track your visitors and don't calculate retention or conversions. If your service does this, they a tracking your user and you might need a cookie banner.

[1] https://simpleanalytics.com

tipiirai• 6 years ago

Hey. Founder of Volument[1] here. We consulted EU law specialists on this particular matter. You are right: you definitely need a cookie banner when you store or process PII data. But GDPR is just an extension to ePrivacy, which says that you also need the cookie banner when any of the device information is accessed (such as the browser URL) for non-essential purposes.

The ePrivacy is just a _directive_ and doesn't oblige to anything. It's the local laws of Europe that do. We have compiled a detailed list of all the European countries and the respective laws that require an analytics service for opt-in or opt-out style banner. [2]

Retention is not possible without cookies or localStorage, but you can measure retention without storing or processing any PII information.

[1] https://volument.com [2] https://volument.com/learn/data-privacy

briandear• 6 years ago

You can't use an analytics cookie without a cookie banner.

In what country? There is certainly no US law to my knowledge, that says that.

ThePhysicist3• 6 years ago

The GDPR is not a clarification of the ePrivacy directive, on the contrary. The ePrivacy directive "particularises" certain aspects of the GDPR. National implementations of the ePrivacy directive (which, unlike the GDPR, needed to be put in laws within each EU country) that e.g. regulate certain aspects of electronic communication have priority over the GDPR as a "lex specialis". Wherever such provisions do not exist, the GDPR takes precedence as a "fallback legislation".

If you don't trust my word on this you might want to check out the official stance of the European Data Protection Board on this (from 2019): https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/files/files/file1/201905_e...

The EU is working on an ePrivacy regulation btw, which will indeed replace the ePrivacy directive, but it's not likely that it will be passed before 2021 or 2022.

jlelse• 6 years ago

BunnyCDN is nice! Switched from Cloudflare one or two years ago and not looking back, it's a "real" CDN and doesn't require cookies.

pier252• 6 years ago

I tried to use their push CDN service but I could never upload a file through their API. I went back and forth with support but nothing got solved.

Also, the API for their dashboard was super slow for me. I mean waiting up to 10 seconds for every click on the dashboard or API interaction.

axelthegerman2• 6 years ago

Can't find it right now but I definitely uploaded some files via their API - weird you couldn't figure it out together with support.

Also their pages load as fast as anything these days, no problem there either.

Super happy with BunnyCDN - even the pricing!

gkbrk• 6 years ago

I have a script [1] that uploads my website to BunnyCDN.

[1] https://github.com/gkbrk/scripts/blob/master/bunnycdn-sync.p...

jamesponddotco• 6 years ago

You can upload files with their API using cURL and the --upload-file parameter. I wrote a shitty bash script to upload images[1] to it which should help you, if you still need it or want to give it a try.

[1] https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/dotfiles/tree/master/.loca...

Aldipower• 6 years ago

This is a really good write up! I wish more companies and SaaS put this the cookie-less directive on top of their priorities. We are do the same, expect we have a jwt-cookie, but which is strictly bound to our domain. Additionally we avoid third-party scripts and apps, fonts or things like the facebook commenting system. Basically all stuff sending user traces to foreign parties. We did a write-up about this here, if you are interessted, how we did it: https://www.tredict.com/blog/we_do_not_track_you/

Saar1991• 6 years ago

i like the idea of having a public analytics tracking page. How early in your journey did you introduce that?

jivings9• 6 years ago

From the start!

tarasmatsyk• 6 years ago

This is an awesome idea, I really love the writing and products presented (TLDR; SimpleAnalytics, BunnyCDN, Intergram). Good luck with LMA, this is an awesome product

IMO, the "cookies banner" does not help to make internet safer, only worsening UI, add a few more banners and there is no content left. How many people who don't know how internet works hit "Disagree" if we still refuse to pay for e-services

GordonS• 6 years ago

This means we are now just using Cloudflare for DNS. But it's possible to hit this button again and re-enable Cloudflare forwarding temporarily if we find ourselves under attack, so I figure this is a good option.

Without this enabled, attackers know what your backend IP address is, so even if you enabled it later, they could continue to DDOS your IP directly, without doing a DNS lookup.

You'd only get what you want if you both re-enabled this and switched to different IP addresses.

eloff• 6 years ago

Also the Cloudflare cookie is clearly for technical purposes, not marketing. So no consent is needed under GDPR, in my understanding. Getting rid of it didn't accomplish anything useful.

calcifer• 6 years ago

Also the Cloudflare cookie is clearly for technical purposes, not marketing.

How do you know that? Because they say so?

mattrick2• 6 years ago

You could firewall off non-Cloudflare requests: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/201897700-A...

Okx• 6 years ago

A software firewall is useless against a DDoS attack. It will only serve to help your IP not get discovered in the first place.

ThePhysicist3• 6 years ago

Well, cookies are not per se evil and you can use them in a privacy-friendly way. You should ask for consent for non-functional cookies (for the Cloudflare cookie you probably wouldn't need to ask for consent, for example) and make sure your consent workflow is compliant with the GDPR. The European Data Protection Board just published guidelines on this btw (in May): https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/files/files/file1/edpb_gui...

We e.g. offer an open-source consent management solution that is compliant with GDPR (as much as you can say that with confidence) and which you can self host: https://github.com/kiprotect/klaro

Building sites without cookies is possible but it's a bit extreme IMHO. Properly scoped and limited first-party cookies do not pose a large privacy risk to indivuals and can make certain legitimate use cases like analytics much easier (or even possible, in some cases).

varispeed• 6 years ago

Isn't the problem about actual tracking and not the cookies? If you track someone without using any cookie you still need to ask for consent. I kind of don't understand the this post. Can someone explain why is it okay to track someone without cookie?

judge20202• 6 years ago

Exactly - cookies are only the most used because they have the largest support by browsers (going back 10 years). If you used purely local storage instead, you’d still need consent to track.

lmkg4• 6 years ago

GDPR regulates tracking individuals, and is not particular about the means or form. On the whole, GDPR is pretty sensible.

There is an older law called the ePrivacy Directive that regulates cookies. Under this law, cookies require consent even if they are not used for tracking, unless they are strictly necessary for technical reasons. This law is a big pain the butt because many reasonable and legitimate uses for cookies aren't "strictly necessary."

The ePrivacy Directive technically applies to reading or writing data from a browser, so it will equally apply to any fingerprinting method you care to think of.

aratob• 6 years ago

It's interesting to see the visitor stats [0] on the blog itself , provided by Simple Analytics:

12K hits for the blogpost, HN is the top traffic source with 7,5K referrals.

[0] https://simpleanalytics.com/blog.leavemealone.app

flibble• 6 years ago

Can anyone recommend and good articles on how to track paid advertising without being reliant on cookies?

Geee• 6 years ago

There's no cookie banner on apple.com, but they use cookies.

There's a cookie banner on google.com, but no way to decline.

maxton• 6 years ago

Assuming Apple is only using cookies for technical purposes, like providing a way to log in or use a shopping cart, then there is no need to use a banner. Google needs the banner because they are using cookies for advertising and tracking purposes, and you can probably guess why there's no way to decline

the_gastropod• 6 years ago

A little bit off topic, but this thing looks suspiciously a lot like https://lunchmoney.app/ and as far as I can tell is totally unrelated. Even the Lunch Money logo is used under the pricing section... Is this just a coincidence / did Lunch Money also use some stock illustrations that’re used here? Or is just good old fashioned copying?

jnfr• 6 years ago

Lunch Money founder here! Thanks for flagging :) My guess is that it was definitely inspired by Lunch Money as the founders here have reached out to me before about liking my branding.

I did not use any stock illustrations for our logo– the idea was thought up by me and subsequently digitally illustrated by me also. I've had my logo/branding both partly and fully copied time and time again, and while seeing this is a bit annoying, I'd chalk it up to "heavy inspiration" over out-right copying. That being said, Leave Me Alone is doing great stuff in a different space and I am rooting for their success.

ss3000• 6 years ago

I enjoyed the post and appreciate that more people are looking for privacy focused alternatives to traditional vendors.

Though I'm disappointed hear that one of the conclusions seems to be there's no privacy-focused chat vendor that does something as simple as not collecting identifying information on users until they interact with the chat app, with integrated consent collection (which is essentially what they've implemented with their fork).

Maybe the wider HN community might know of such a service?

jivings9• 6 years ago

I think there's a gap in the market here!

mickael-kerjean• 6 years ago

There's ton of open source ones, I use intergram (https://github.com/idoco/intergram) but there's more:

- https://github.com/LiveHelperChat/livehelperchat

- https://github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot

- https://github.com/papercups-io/papercups

amzans• 6 years ago

Super excited to see many websites exploring alternatives to the traditional services.

This is pretty much how I got started on https://panelbear.com

Feeling super lucky as I just launched last month and already several hundred websites are actively using it.

There is a free plan if you just want to try it out.

jokethrowaway• 6 years ago

This is just feedback as a user and fellow maker - so you can calibrate your target audience (given that only people who care about being tracked are vocal on this):

I love your service because I can easily get rid of crappy newsletter but I don't care if a website is tracking me and I'd prefer if you'd spend more time on the product instead of this bike shedding.

I understand the marketing plan and getting traffic from HN and I respect that, but as a user, I'm slightly put off by this.

I hate crappy emails like I hate cookie banners. It's not because of privacy concerns, it's because it's a PITA.

We made our SaaS home page cookie-free

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