How we count, without tracking cookies

This page explains, in full transparency, how Quiet Metrics measures a site's audience without identifying or tracking cookies, and without building any profile. It is the readable version of our technical documentation, and our public commitment.

Nothing that identifies you is written on your device

We write no identifying cookie, no tracking cookie and no identifier of any kind in your browser: nothing we count makes it possible to recognise you from one visit to the next. For each page view, our script only sends: the page address, the previous page (the referrer), the browser language and the window size, reduced to a class on the server as soon as it arrives: the exact value is never kept.

Two things only can be written, and neither of them singles you out. The first does the exact opposite of measuring: it stops the counting, because you asked for it. The second avoids counting you twice when your connection changes in the middle of a visit. Here they are, one after the other.

The exclusion marker, written when you ask for it

On a site measured by Quiet Metrics, add ?qm_ignore=1 to the address of any page and you stop being counted:

https://mysite.com/?qm_ignore=1

The same move with ?qm_ignore=0 removes the marker and puts you back into measurement. There is nothing else to do: no account to create, no setting to find again.

This marker is:

• a cookie of the site you are visiting (path=/, samesite=lax, secure over https, five years), which our browser script mirrors in localStorage: the cookie is the only marker server-side measurement can read, and the copy takes over for the script once the cookie has been cleared or refused. A single visit therefore covers both measurement modes;
• free of any identifier: it holds the value 1 for everyone, so it tells nobody apart;
• never sent to Quiet Metrics: it goes into no request to our servers, so we do not even learn that you opted out.

That is what separates it from a measurement cookie: it does not follow you, it stops you being counted. A refusal marker, set by the person themselves, calls for no consent.

The visit continuity cookie, and why it exists

This one you do not ask for: the measurement sets it. It is called qm_visit, its value is 1, and it says one single thing: a visit is already under way in this browser.

Without it, here is what happens to you. We tell you apart from other visitors with a fingerprint recomputed on every page, from your subscriber network and your browser (the method is described just below). You read three pages on mobile data on the train, you get home, your phone switches to wifi, you read the fourth: your network has changed, so your fingerprint has too, and you have just counted as two different visitors on the same day. This cookie corrects exactly that, and nothing else.

It is:

• ten sliding minutes long: every page view pushes the deadline back by ten minutes, and it disappears on its own once you stop browsing. It is not waiting for you when you come back;
• free of any identifier: its value is 1 for everyone, exactly like the exclusion marker. It tells you apart from nobody, and two browsers carrying it are indistinguishable from one another;
• a cookie of the site you are visiting (path=/, samesite=lax, secure over https), with no counterpart in localStorage;
• never set if you have opted out: the exclusion marker stops the measurement before any write, so a browser carrying qm_ignore does not receive this cookie.

What reaches us is not its content, since it has none: only the fact that it was there. That is enough for us to attach your page to the visit already open, and it teaches us nothing about you.

Unlike the exclusion marker, this cookie serves the measurement: it therefore falls not under the exemption that applies to a refusal, but under the regime of audience measurement, which the operator of the site you are visiting determines.

An ephemeral fingerprint, destroyed every night

To distinguish visitors without identifying them, each visit is attached to a fingerprint computed as follows:

• a secret salt, regenerated every night and then destroyed;
• combined with your subscriber network and your browser: this data transits through an encrypted, time-bounded queue, then remains in memory for a few milliseconds, and is never written to the measurement tables;
• and with the site identifier: the same person on two client sites produces two different fingerprints, so no cross-site matching is possible.

That network stands for your internet access, never for your device. Over IPv6 we keep only the /64 prefix and discard the low-order 64 bits, the ones that designate your device and that your system's privacy extensions already rotate. Over IPv4 the whole address stands for an entire household anyway, grouped behind a single number by the operator's address sharing. We therefore observe less than we used to, and we count more accurately: a device that renewed its address during the day used to stop being recognised and counted as several visitors.

Once the previous day's salt is destroyed, the fingerprint can no longer be recomputed to link one day's visits to the next, nor to trace the address it came from. Quiet Metrics therefore cannot follow a visitor over time.

What the site owner sees

Aggregated statistics only: number of visitors and page views, popular pages, traffic sources, country and region (never finer), device type, browser, language. A "session" is simply a series of page views less than 30 minutes apart.

What we do not do

• no advertising, no resale or sharing of data;
• no cross-site tracking, no profiles, no individual cohorts;
• no city-level geolocation by default, never down to the address;
• detailed events and aggregates are purged automatically at the end of the plan's retention period (6 to 25 months).

What about this very site?

This page (and the whole public part of our site) is served without any cookie: it does not even load our measurement script. A session cookie only appears when you sign in to the dashboard; it is strictly necessary for the account to work.

Implementation details (hashing formula, salt rotation and retention periods) are documented in our compliance file, available on request together with the DPA. The absence of identifying and tracking cookies alone does not guarantee a consent exemption: the applicable rules depend on the purposes and enabled features.