Some Internet-in-a-Box (IIAB) field projects want deeper community insights, to understand important/subtle usage patterns in ways that AWStats is not able to offer.

One of the most common questions is "how many unique phones/devices took advantage of this IIAB over the past day/week/month?"

However we seek to go about answering these kinds of questions, there are huge/tricky privacy-versus-surveillance questions if HW GUID's or cookies are tracked to make this happen. And what Data Minimization / Data Deletion policy recommendations are appropriate to advance ethical best practices.

Let's discuss what's possible in 2019 — to give IIAB community leaders stronger insights into the ever-evolving patterns as to how their communities are using IIAB — while taking unintended antiprivacy consequences very seriously (so that disadvantaged populations are never abused/persecuted, e.g. based on their library reading/viewing/listening habits).

P.S. the fact that most Raspberry Pi computers lack an internal RTC (real-time clock & associated battery) means the challenge here is especially complicated, both for tabulating meaningful stats/patterns, and also to implement data deletion policies e.g. if mobile devices GUID's / cookies records (or similar) should be deleted completely from the server monthly or so?

Prior Work:

• http://FAQ.IIAB.IO "How do I view usage statistics?"
• 3 different RPi3 RTC's (DS3231) don't retain the time on IIAB 6.5/master #657
• AWStats community patterns/analytics/statistics/metrics #1268 "AWStats community patterns/analytics/statistics/metrics"
• Enhance "How do I view usage statistics?" in FAQ for IIAB 8.1+ release #1332 "Enhance "How do I view usage statistics?" in FAQ for IIAB 7.0 or 7.1 release"