Twilight of the Analytics, Part 2

I have now discontinued my use of Google Analytics tracking on the Ate Up With Motor website, and I have initiated the process of deleting the existing analytics data. If you already have ateupwithmotor.com analytics cookies (and/or analytics consent cookies) on your device, they will remain until they expire (which may take some time) or until you delete them, but they will no longer function.

At this point, my intention is to retain only whatever bits of analytics data I may have included in past email messages. For example, if at some point I sent someone an email along the lines of “According to my Google Analytics data, the site had X unique visitors in June, up from Y in May,” or “Right now, the analytics data shows that these specific articles are the most frequently viewed,” I will likely retain such email unless I have some other outstanding reason to delete it. (Most or all the data of that kind is aggregate statistics, not individual visitor data.) I’ll also likely retain Google notification emails related to the analytics service.

The complete deletion of the rest of the analytics data could take a while. According to this help page, it takes 35 days for an analytics “property” to be permanently deleted. Other Google documentation indicates that the actual deletion of data from this and other Google services is performed via scheduled “deletion processes” that take place about every two months. As best I can determine, this means that while the deleted analytics data will no longer be recoverable by me after 35 days, it may take up to about 90 days (give or take) before it’s completely gone. (ETA: I confirmed on May 11 that the property was gone from the Trash, so I can no longer recover it.)

I’ve updated the “Online Tracking” section of the Privacy Policy to reflect all this, retaining the links to the various relevant Google documents. If you have questions, please let me know.

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