Interested in how statistics services (the same liveinternet or yandex, google) keep track of unique users. If everything is clear with the number of views, each request is simply considered. How is uniqueness checked? With authorized users it is also more or less clear - to count one username no more than once a day.

But when the user is not authorized, how does the statistics service find out the same user has viewed a site or two different ones?

  • It feeds the user cookies (and / or other, more exotic types of data returned to the server upon request). Accordingly, the next time the user calls, he will send this cookie to the server and he will know it. Actually, any authorization on any site uses the same principle, only requiring a username and password and then issuing a cookie based on them. Plus, ip-address can be counted separately, in case the client does not return cookies - Mike
  • @Mike So cookies are the settings of the site, how does the service understand that this is a unique user? Besides, cookies can be easily deleted? I think this is nonsense about an IP address, because now one provider often issues one IP address per 1000 computers, plus 4 devices are connected to a router in almost every apartment. Even if it gives out external IP, then they are constantly changing - Pavel Igorev
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    Cookies are not site settings, but some information transmitted to the browser from a specific domain name and returned by the browser when accessing the same domain name. When the browser climbs to, say, a picture of the counter from the statistics server, it will send it cookies not from this site, but cookies linked to the domain name of the statistics service itself. And if you delete cookies, you will probably be counted a second time, or maybe not, decide that it is enough to consider the unique ones from your IP. And besides, they can give you an ETag, and you will not delete it - Mike
  • Well, ip in any case is taken into account to avoid cheating. In any case, all that is in contact is cookies, ETag, information about the browser, IP. Nothing else. So personally, I would do this: if there were no calls yet from this ip - unique, if there were, we look at cookies, if there is a cookie / ETag, we look at them, if not and ip was already today - we don’t consider it unique - Mike
  • It turns out from the same computer an authorized and unauthorized user will be considered for two different? And do I understand correctly that with each request, deleting cookies and changing proxies, I can cheat up to 1000 visitors per day? - Pavel Igorev

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