secure.gaug.es: How Gauges Tracks Your Website Visits

The domain secure.gaug.es operates as an analytics tracker for Gauges, monitoring your activity on websites to provide detailed visitor data to site owners. This invasive surveillance builds a profile of your behavior, undermining your privacy. Here’s the breakdown and how to resist.

What Is secure.gaug.es?

Gauges, now part of LeadPages, is a web analytics tool that tracks user interactions on sites. The secure.gaug.es domain logs page views and clicks to generate reports for website owners, but it comes at the cost of your personal data. Privacy Auditors are here to expose this tracking.

Data It Collects

When you visit a site using Gauges, it captures:

• IP Address: Identifies your location via your network.
• Page Views: Tracks every page you access on the site.
• Session Length: Records how long you stay active.
• Click Patterns: Logs where you click on pages.
• Device Details: Notes browser and OS, like ‘Chrome on Android 13’.
• Cookie IDs: Ties visits over time with unique identifiers.
• Referrer URL: Captures where you came from before visiting.
• Timestamps: Logs precise times of interactions.

This data creates a detailed log of your online activity, ripe for analysis.

Who Gets Your Data?

Gauges shares your information with:

• Website Owner: Sites using Gauges for visitor analytics.
• Marketing Tool: Platforms integrated for user profiling.
• Third-Party Service Provider: Firms analyzing traffic data.
• Cloud Hosting Provider: Services storing analytics data.

How to Protect Yourself

Privacy Auditors Institute is dedicated to protecting your privacy. Stop secure.gaug.es tracking with these steps:

• Install Tracker Blockers: Use Privacy Auditor’s paid service to block analytics scripts. The free version detects trackers.
• Hide with a VPN: Mask your IP with a VPN like Mullvad to avoid location tracking.
• Switch to Privacy Browsers: Use Firefox with strict protection or Tor for anonymity.
• Disable JavaScript: Stop trackers by turning off JavaScript, though sites may break.
• Clear Cookies Regularly: Wipe cookies to disrupt session tracking.

Layer these methods for stronger defense against analytics trackers.

Sources

Due to limited data on Gauges post-acquisition, information is based on:

• General analytics tracker behavior from industry documentation.
• Lack of updated privacy policies or transparency reports for Gauges.

This is a legal disclaimer. All information is provided for educational purposes only.