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+---
+title: Pageview Time Experiment
+date: 2019-08-19
+---
+
+# Pageview Time Experiment
+
+My blog has a lot of content in a lot of diverse categories. In order to help me
+decide which kind of content I should publish next, I have created a very
+simple method to track pageview time and enabled it for all of my blogposts. I'll
+go into detail of how it works and potential risks of it below.
+
+The high level idea is that I want to be able to know what kind of content has
+people's attention for the longest amount of time. I am using the time people
+have the page open as a particularly terrible proxy for that value. I wanted to
+make this data anonymous, simplistic and (reasonably) public.
+
+## How It Works
+
+Here is how it works:
+
+![A diagram on how this works](/static/img/pageview_flowchart.png)
+
+When the page is loaded, a [javascript file records the start time](/static/js/pateview_timer.js).
+This then sets a [pagehide handler](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/pagehide_event)
+to send a [navigator beacon](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/sendBeacon)
+containing the following data:
+
+- The path of the page being viewed
+- The start time
+- The end time recorded by the pagehide handler
+
+This information is asynchronously pushed to [`/api/pageview-timer`](https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/91d7214b341088edba7a37a83a753e75ed02d7ad/cmd/site/pageview.go)
+and added to an in-memory prometheus histogram. These histograms can be checked at 
+[`/metrics`](/metrics). This data is not permanently logged.
+
+## Security Concerns
+
+I believe this data is anonymous, simplistic and public for the following reasons:
+
+I believe this data is anonymous because there is no way for me to correlate users
+to histogram entries, nor is there a way for me to view all of the raw histogram
+entries. This site records the bare minimum for what I need in order to make sure
+everything is functioning normally, and all data is stored in ephemeral in-memory
+containers as much as possible. This includes any logs that my service produces.
+
+I believe this data is simplistic because it only has a start time, a stop time
+and the path that is being looked at. This data doesn't take into account things
+like people leaving a page open for hours on end idly, and that could skew the
+numbers. The API endpoint is also fairly unprotected, meaning that falsified data
+could be submitted to it easily. I think that this is okay though.
+
+I believe this data is public because I have the percentile views of the histograms
+present on [`/metrics`](/metrics). I have no reason to hide this data, and I do not
+intend to use it for any moneymaking purposes (though I doubt it could be to begin
+with).
+
+I fully respect the [do not track](https://allaboutdnt.com) header and flag in browsers.
+If [`pageview_timer.js`](/static/js/pateview_timer.js) detects the presence of
+do not track in the browser, it stops running immediately and does not set the pagehide
+handler. If that somehow fails, the server looks for the presence of the `DNT` header
+set to `1` and instantly discards the data and replies with a 404.
+
+Like always, if you have any questions or concerns please reach out to me. I
+want to ensure that I am creating useful views into how people use my blog
+without violating people's rights to privacy.
+
+I intend to keep this up for at least a few weeks. If it doesn't have any practical
+benefit in that timespan, I will disable this and post a follow-up explaining how
+I believe it wasn't useful.
+
+Thanks and be well.