Visit counting goes through our own site

The visit counter now talks only to Front Door, which sets its settings so it never records what you click on, and passes the counts on without your cookies or internet address.

Open Analytics, which counts visits to our public pages, turned on click recording for our site on its own, with no switch to turn it off. Click recording can save the words on what you click. Our Privacy page says we do not do that, so we changed how the counter works.

• The counter now sends everything to our own site first, not to Open Analytics directly.
• Our site sets its settings before the counter sees them. Click recording stays off, whatever Open Analytics changes.
• Search words, message links and sign-in codes in a page address are hidden from every address it sends.
• We pass the counts on without your cookies or your internet address. Open Analytics no longer sees where you connect from.
• The check we run before every release now reads the settings the way your browser gets them, and fails if click recording is on.
• The Privacy page says all of this.