

Anatomy of Google analytics cookies - wasigh
http://devblog.eduhub.nl/anatomy-of-google-analytics-cookies

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CWIZO
Since Google is so keen on improving the speed of the internet (and good for
them for that) I'm looking forward to the day when they'll only use one cookie
for all their tracking (if that's even possible). GA is, by Google's
standards, a speed hog right now, and Page speed always complains about it ...

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dude_abides
Just wondering: Why doesn't a webserver encrypt the cookie value with a
server-side key? This way, the information in the cookie (timestamps,
pageviews, number of sessions etc.) can be safe from wireshark sniffers.

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calloc
That would have to be done on Google's end, that is not something webmasters
using Google Analytics are able to do by themselves.

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dude_abides
Yep. I'm wondering why Google, in this case, wouldn't encrypt the value stored
in its cookie. Is there any technical reason other than laziness?

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calloc
I believe the cookies are set and manipulated by JavaScript, as such I'm not
even sure it would be a good idea...

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toddh
Nice, I always wondered how they worked.

