Do Not Track, the signal most analytics ignore
What the Do Not Track browser signal is, why most analytics tools quietly ignore it, and how sonex honours it so visitors who opt out are never counted.
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Most browsers can send a quiet request on every page load: please do not track me. It is called Do Not Track, and almost every analytics tool ignores it. sonex can honour it. Here is what the signal is and why respecting it is the honest default.
What Do Not Track is
Do Not Track (DNT) is a header a browser sends when the visitor has turned the setting on. It is an explicit, machine-readable statement of preference, the digital equivalent of saying “no thanks” at the door. There is no ambiguity to interpret; the person has already answered.
Why it is usually ignored
Honouring DNT means counting fewer people, and most analytics is built to collect the maximum. So the industry treated DNT as optional and, in practice, ignored it into irrelevance. The signal still works; the tools just chose not to listen.
How sonex honours it
sonex can skip visitors who send the DNT signal entirely, so they are never counted. You turn it on with one attribute on the tracker script:
<script defer
src="https://api.trysonex.com/sonex.js"
data-website-id="YOUR_WEBSITE_ID"
data-do-not-track="true"></script>With that set, a visitor who has enabled Do Not Track is not measured at all. No hash, no pageview, nothing.
Does it dent your numbers?
Slightly, and that is fine. The share of visitors sending DNT is usually small, and the ones who do have made their preference clear. Analytics you can trust is worth more than a count inflated by people who asked to be left alone. Because sonex already collects no personal data, honouring DNT is a small, coherent extra step rather than a contradiction.
The principle underneath
You can tell a lot about an analytics tool by whether it respects a signal that costs it data. Ignoring Do Not Track to pad a number is the same instinct that produces cookie banners and per-user profiles. Honouring it is part of the same principle sonex is built on: measure the site, respect the person, and let their stated choice stand.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the Do Not Track signal?
- Do Not Track (DNT) is a browser setting that sends a header asking sites and third parties not to track the visitor. It is a clear, machine-readable statement of preference, but honouring it is voluntary, and most analytics tools ignore it.
- Does sonex respect Do Not Track?
- Yes. sonex can honour the Do Not Track signal so that visitors who have enabled it are skipped entirely and never counted. You opt in by adding data-do-not-track="true" to the tracker script tag.
- Why do most analytics tools ignore Do Not Track?
- Because honouring it means counting fewer people, and tools built for maximum data collection are reluctant to do that. A privacy-first tool has no such conflict, since it is not trying to build profiles in the first place.
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