Google Analytics Opt-Out for Webradio?

The analytics will be important to the website in determining how popular it is, what advertising it can push for as a result etc, I am not sure what you are uncomfortable about, are you listening to Take That or something?

I suggest if this concerns you, the web of things is probably not for you. On that basis you will need to ditch the free web radio. I cannot see how it contravenes any law, if you have a smart phone, it knows where you are and what you are doing all the time. Far more concerning than what radio station you are listening too?

Don't be a spoil sport, Gary, we all love a good conspiracy theory...?

Take that, take this. What are you talking about?

Anyhow, analytics don't need to be done by evil Google. It can also be done by the site who is interested in statistics by itself.

I understand your concern with respect to privacy, but I suspect that this is DNS support necessary for the vTuner service to function.

If you lookup the DNS records for vtuner.com, you will see entries for both dnsmadeeasy as well as securityspace, which piggyback onto Google Public DNS.

Without sounding overly black-hat, there is no way to know what data is being harvested unless you have total control over the transmission channel–and this applies to the entirety of the Internet, even when using a Tor client.

Also–your vTuner account is homed to the MAC address of the Naim streaming device, which synchronizes any added radio stations and preferences for tuning as a courtesy, not as spyware. No one honestly cares what you're individually listening to, except in the aggregate (along with many other users),

The same behavior applies to any media indexing service such as Rovi, or other internet radio providers–the necessary connectivity abrogates any notion of privacy you might believe you are entitled to.

Unless you're listening to the Moody Blues, you have nothing to worry about.

@Jude2012, that's not the same thing (phone usage analytics vs traffic analysis).

An Internet Radio service provider (catalog server) must allocate DC (data center) point-of-presence resources based on the aggregate location of clients, to insure that the least number of DNS hops is required (this also affects buffering and reduces the number of dropouts, by the way) to fulfill a request to a specific URI.

This is often done in tandem with a large service provider such as AT&T or Google. It is common to bundle Google DNS and Analytics services together at this stage. (In many respects, this is more crucial for a broadcaster or catalog provider than it is for a server which merely serves up static pages.)

Once the redirect has occurred, the connection is kept alive at the broadcast server for the entire session; if anything transpires to disrupt this connection along the way, you will experience dropouts or issues with buffering. Good DNS is crucial for this.

It has been suggested on other forums (such as the Sonos forum) that changing your DNS servers to Google Public DNS or OpenDNS may help with dropout or buffering issues with Internet Radio or premium streaming service providers.

The session is not encrypted, so (in theory) anyone can listen in on your stream anyway (not that it would be any different than another client connecting to the same stream!). As the data stream is multicast, there is no point in utilizing SSL encryption for purposes of privacy (and would be tremendously wasteful of resources).

Thanks for your response.

I get the difference between usage analysis and traffic analysis.  I was responding to the comment from Garyi regarding mobile phone usage analysis.

In respect of using Google Public DNS as a sole source of DNS, you have clarified that Google is not the only reliable source for this. 

In respect of privacy, I agree that anyone could listen in.  However, their motivations to do so must have a business value.  In this case, the policies of the content delivery supplier/service provider (uisng your example of AT&T) are of relevance to privacy concerns. 

So, as Google's business model is based on offering free services in order to access, harvest, and resell data, my trust in using Google DNS is very low.  Of course, as you say, anyone could listen in as the data in not encrypted.  However, for me (and possibly the OP) it is a question of who is motivated to do so.

Jude

David, DNS can resolve the IP address based on your source address or be redirected.. This allows a relatively local server to be used and is obviously used a lot with big web services.. This is often referred to as geolocation type services... I don't see what Google analytics has to do with any of this if indeed it is being used... And in my opinion should not be necessary and if marketing info is being collated one should have the option to optin or opt out... 

Simon

There's a useful browser plug-in called Ghostery that will show you (and let you block) trackers. There's 5 trackers on this site and some sites have 15 or more.

The irony is that the CDN used to distribute Ghostery itself has a tracker (facepalm).

It's my belief that people get very worked up about privacy when it comes to their online lifestyle, but are perfectly clueless when tossing stuff into the trash that might provide a far more acute vector of attack.

The question becomes: if you could not opt out of Google Analytics, would you continue to use the service?  My guess is that you would.