Modify the IP Address Sent to Google Analytics (Germans, Look Here!)

December 17th, 2009 by Lars Johansson

I told you about the possibility to offer visitors the chance to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics a couple of days ago.

After that I found out that EControlling.de has worked on a method to anonymize IP addresses before they get recorded by Google Analytics.

EControlling.de has played around with the utmip variable in server-side tracking scripts and replaced part of it using a regular expression.

They have also, as seen on www.analytics-anonym.de, replaced the ga.js on Google’s server with a modified version on their own server. The modified version loads __utm.gif from www.analytics-anonym.de instead of www.google-analytics.com. The “image” on the alternative server sends modified information to Google Analytics. Read more on the EControlling.de website.