_ga = google analytics?

#1

Hi, I’m trying to make my write.as site GDPR compliant, and so far I’m experimenting with a cookie banner, but at the same time I’m trying to figure out what the different cookies do (and what they are). When using chrome (and only chrome, but it could maybe be because of settings and not the browser), I can find the following cookie on my write.as site:

-ga, with the value ‘GA1.2.1181992703.1580997059’

Isn’t this a Google analytics tracker? The privacy policy on write.as says ‘Using Matomo ensures that this data never leaves our servers, and big analytics companies like Google never see your data’

Is there something I’m just not getting?

–
Tom

#2

I’m not entirely sure – it might be. Either way, it’s probably getting injected into the page by one of your Chrome browser extensions, since Write.as doesn’t use Google Analytics. (You might confirm this by seeing if it’s also present on another site that doesn’t have GA tracking.)

#3

Hi, and thank you for the anwer. The cookie only seems to be present on write.as websites, and only if using Chrome. I’ve tried disabling all extensions in Chrome, but it’s still there. Rather strange… I was hoping disabling all cookies was an option, but for now I’ll try to understand what cookies there are.

#4

Do you think it’s related to using webfont.js ?

#5

I don’t think so… I haven’t inspected the code, but it’s a library developed by several companies and shouldn’t come with Google Analytics.

Did you also delete all cookies on Write.as after disabling all extensions? Any cookies will still persist with the extensions disabled. So you’ll want to disable them, delete cookies, and then visit Write.as to confirm that we aren’t adding the _ga cookie. (Note that you’ll have to re-login to Write.as after doing so.)