I know very little about SimpleanAlytics. However, they do claim to not be a tracker: https://simpleanalytics.io/no-tracking. So, they at the least, would argue one of your claims - do you have evidence that what they are saying incorrect?
By definition, loading it will send your (regardless of whether or not they save this or associate it permanently on their end) coarse location via IP, OS, CPU architecture, browser and via user agent, referrer, execute code on your machine, pages you visit.
In their page they say (w/r/t Google Analytics) "you maybe use the anonymization feature. This is a step in the right direction, but the sad reality is Google can still collect all the information" -- you would have to trust them too [Simple Analytics] to not collect, save, or delete-accordingly all the information sent to them.
It is a third party information collector, period. It tracks visits, it tracks pageviews, at minimum. I am not against them as a company or product, but I believe that easyprivacy is 100% correct in blocking their domain.
I think its a big mistake to lump this type of "tracking" in with more involved "tracking" where particular users are followed around from site to site to serve up ads based on what the user has looked at recently. These are massively different things. Maybe you are opposed to both types of tracking - I dunno. Personally, I have no issue with a website keeping track of the things that they claim to keep track of (https://simpleanalytics.io/what-we-collect). However, when tracking means that a user does a search for something like "maternity" on one site and then starts getting ads for baby diapers on another - that feels like something that I understand why someone would want to avoid.
Even if I kind of agree in principle, what you are asking me is to trust what the provider claims it will do with this data. It’s an industry that I just do not trust, even if I had the appetite to do the due diligence which I don’t. Even if I knew the guy and was convinced he had good intentions, he might still get hacked or acquired and the data used some other way in the future.
Therefore I expect my blocker to block a 3rd party tracker which by definition has the capability to track me across websites. It makes that kind of tracking technically infeasible which is the level of protection I want.
I agree, there's tracking and there's counting. SimpleAnalytics appears to just count hits, but doesn't track users - no cookies set, no browser fingerprinting. Sure, we have to trust in them really not storing IPs etc, but it does look good. Not tracking users, only global site usage.
Sure - I see nothing wrong with separating out the categories. There are different types and different levels.
End of the day, at least in my opinion, it is acceptable to be added to blocklists, and it is acceptable to not use those blocklists and hit the beacon.
Yes. A website can host everything it serves. Including 3rd party stuff on your page is sharing data about my visit with 3rd party. So I'll block all 3rd party stuff by default, with manual exceptions
