Cookieless & privacy
Snow is built to respect your visitors. You own your data, it isn’t sold or shared, and you can choose a tracking mode that stores nothing on visitors’ devices.
Two tracking modes
You pick a mode per site under Settings → Tracking → Privacy & cookies (or
with the data-mode attribute). New sites
default to cookieless; changes affect new visits only.
Cookieless mode (default)
In Settings this is labelled Cookie-less Mode (Strict Privacy).
Stores nothing on the visitor’s device: no cookies, no local storage. Instead, your collector derives a visitor ID from a daily-rotating, salted hash of the visitor’s IP address and browser. A visitor can still be counted within a day, but the identifier can’t be reversed back to them and resets every 24 hours.
Attribution mode
In Settings this is labelled Standard Mode (with cookies).
Stores a first-party visitor ID and session ID in the visitor’s browser (see How tracking works). This is what powers returning-visitor counts and linking revenue to a visit. The cookies are first-party only, never shared with another site, never used for cross-site ads.
| Attribution mode | Cookieless mode | |
|---|---|---|
| Stores anything on the device? | First-party cookies | No |
| Returning visitors across days | ✅ | ✗ (resets daily) |
| Revenue attribution across sessions | ✅ | ✗ |
| Best for | Returning visitors & revenue (with consent) | Default: maximum privacy, no banner |
In cookieless mode, sa.getVisitorId() and sa.getSessionId() return empty
strings. The IDs only exist on the server.
Do you need a cookie banner?
Cookieless mode is designed so you may not need one: it doesn’t store anything on the visitor’s device and doesn’t build a long-lived identifier. Even in attribution mode, Snow uses only first-party cookies for your own analytics, not third-party advertising cookies.
This is guidance, not legal advice. Privacy rules vary by region and by how you use the data (for example, if you identify users or attach personal data). Check your own obligations.
Do Not Track and opt-out
Snow honors browser privacy signals automatically: when a visitor sends Global
Privacy Control or Do Not Track, the snippet sends nothing and stores no
identifier. Turn this off per site with
data-honor-dnt="false" if you have a lawful
basis to track regardless.
You can also let visitors opt out (and back in) from your own UI:
sa("optout"); // stop tracking on this device and clear any stored ID
sa("optin"); // resume (still subject to Do Not Track / GPC)The privacy model in short
- You own the data. Snow is self-hosted, so analytics data lives on your own infrastructure. It isn’t sold or shared with third parties.
- No cross-site tracking. Snow identifies visitors only on your site, never across the web.
- IP addresses stay on the server. They’re used to work out approximate location (and, in cookieless mode, the rotating ID) and aren’t shown as raw addresses in your reports.
- Identification is opt-in. Snow only ever knows a visitor’s name or email if you identify them.