Your Indie Site is Quietly Tracking Every Visitor

Last week, I was tweaking my landing page in a coffee shop, and my friend Zhang Wei pointed at the screen: "You've got three trackers embedded here. Visitor data gets logged the second they land." I totally flushed—I had no idea when those tracking scripts even got in there. So many site templates, font services, and even icon libraries silently load tracking pixels, and we just don't feel it.

What is Do Not Track + Who Uses It

Do Not Track (donottrack.sh) is a free script that scans and disables third-party trackers on your site. My designer friend Li Na, who runs a studio in Hangzhou, used it on a client's site last week and found the theme template came with 5 tracking pixels—she had no idea they were there. A lot of us building personal brands and indie sites are using it now because we don't want visitors thinking, "This site is stealing my data." When it comes to privacy, if a client asks and you can't explain it clearly, it's just awkward.

Replicate Cost Today

Money: $0. Time: 5 minutes. Technical barrier: Just copy and paste code; no need to know what a "terminal" or "command line" is. First step: Open donottrack.sh, copy the line of code, and paste it into the tag of your site (that's the very first part of the page code—most site builders have a "custom code" input box in their backend). I messed this up at first: I pasted the code at the very bottom of the page, and the trackers kept running as usual. I later learned this code must load before any other scripts on the page to work. If you're using a site builder like Notion where you can't add custom code to the backend, this tool isn't for you right now, and that's okay.

Advice by Stage

Just starting: If you haven't built your site yet or are still using a standard platform, don't worry about this now. Get your content up and running first. 1-2 clients: If you already have an official site taking visitors, I'd suggest spending 5 minutes to add this. Having client data tracked by third parties sounds bad; adding this gives peace of mind. Scaling up: If you're running ads or doing SEO, I'd suggest checking carefully. Ad plugins often come with their own trackers, and you might not even know how many you've installed. Give it a scan so you know where you stand.