[squid-users] Tracking user connection times

[Amos Jeffries]

On 21/04/2015 2:34 a.m., Dan Berry wrote:
> 
> I have setup a squid proxy as a POC for user tracking. I am looking
> for a way to track for close events, most of the customer sites that
> are accessed are HTTPS so I can't track activity. I might be able to
> get by with tracking total connect time, so I know the windows of
> time users were connected to a specific site. Is this possible?

Nope. Best you will achieve is a guesstimate.

HTTP is stateless protocol. There is no such thing as close (or open).
The only thing anywhere like a duration in it is the time it takes to
deliver the message bytes and request-response latency. If you try to
use that you will find that users spend an *extremely small* amount of
time visiting URLs. The vast majority of time is spent elsewhere doing
things with the response objects.

Semi-reliable user tracking was possible back in the 1980-1990s - though
the coffee problem has always been an issue. But with the invention of
multiple-windows on a screen, and more recently tabbed browsing the
ability to guess offline activity for page A vs page B is much reduced.


I know there are lots of companies etc out there saying they can track
user activity for third-party sites. They are lying-by-omission, at most
they are tracking the activity of some marker which may (or may not)
actually be representing "a user" through some series of message
transactions. It always comes down to somebody making a guess about
whether any two requests are related.

Amos