Why we don't use cookies (and how we still count visitors)

The most common question we get is a fair one: if you don't use cookies, how do you know how many unique visitors I had?

The short answer: a daily-rotating salted hash. Here's what that means and why it protects your visitors.

The problem with cookies

Cookies (and other persistent identifiers) work by tagging each visitor with an ID that sticks around — across pages, days, and often across other websites entirely. That's what makes cross-site tracking and advertising profiles possible, and it's why so many sites need a consent banner.

We didn't want to build on that foundation.

How Ometra counts instead

For each request, we generate a one-way hash from four things:

• the visitor's IP address,
• their browser's User-Agent,
• the website being visited, and
• a secret salt that rotates every 24 hours.

That hash lets us recognize the same visitor within a single day on a single site — enough for an accurate daily count. But because the salt is thrown away when it rotates, the same person can't be linked from one day to the next, or across different sites.

What we never store

• No cookies on the visitor's device.
• No stored IP addresses — the IP is used only to compute the hash and a coarse location, then discarded.
• No persistent identifiers and no fingerprinting.

The result is that long-term and cross-site tracking are impossible by design, not just by policy — while you still get the metrics you need.

Want the full details? See our Data Policy.