Glass's User Anonymization Algorithm
Privacy-First
Glass is a web analytics platform designed to respect user's privacy, while simultaneously providing website owners enough information to make business decisions.
Cookie-less Session Tracking
Glass does not use cookies, device fingerprinting, or any other nasty tracking technology.
IP Addresses
Glass does not store IP addresses or similar personally identifiable information.
Glass uses IP addresses at our ingest edge in order to calculate:
- Country
- Anonymous Session ID
Limited Lifetime Session Identifier
Glass uses an innovative anonymizing session identifier to maintain sessions.
Our algorithm is as follows:
session_id = md5(current_date_UTC + ip_address)
Every night at midnight UTC, the salt for the md5 hash changes, and the sessions are reset.
The md5 hash is irreversible and the IP address cannot be derived from it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you collect personally identifiable information about users?
No.
Glass was designed with privacy in mind. We only collect anonymized, aggregated statistics.
Do you collect IP addresses?
No.
When data arrives at our edge, IP addresses are immediately hashed with an irreversible algorithm.
The seeds for algorithm are rotated at midnight UTC.
Where is data located?
We operate a global edge network; users communicate with the servers closest to them.
Data is hashed at our edge, and then transmitted to our central database, which is located in the EU.