GoDaddy JavaScript Injection Slows Down Your Website
I have three websites hosted at GoDaddy and recently I noticed a marked slowdown when loading all three of them, so I ran some speed tests through GTmetrix and Google Page Speed Insights. Both came back with slower than expected results which was particularly surprising for my new website which has only one small image to load, with the rest of the pages being nothing more than text.
In the results, I remember JavaScript being mentioned, but being half asleep at the time, forgot to take the necessary screenshots. Anyway, I ran a search through Google – GoDaddy website JavaScript very slow loading – and came across numerous articles highlighting the very naughty practice from GoDaddy whereby they forcibly opted every paying customer into their Real User Metrics scheme. This means that GoDaddy was injecting JavaScript into our pages to “…measure and track the performance of your website, and collect information such as connection time and page load time.”
Fortunately, there is a simple solution which is to log in to your GoDaddy account>My Products>Hosting>the website you want to exclude>click three dots>click Help Us>Opt Out.
GoDaddy Backtracks With A Statement
Since this sly invasion was discovered, many sites have written about this potentially site-breaking invasion which has forced GoDaddy to backtrack and issue a statement.
“We created a Real User Metrics (RUM) JavaScript to improve our hosting environment for our customers. The script is a non-invasive performance monitor that enables us to measure and track the performance of customer websites, and collects information, such as connection time and page load time.
We only collect performance data, nothing more. We don’t collect personal information. The data we collect is used to monitor our internal systems, optimize DNS resolution, improve network routing and server configurations, and help us improve the performance of our customers’ websites.
After careful review of the concerns being raised around this program, we have decided to turn off the JavaScript insertion on our hosting platform immediately. We will reintroduce this program in the future, so that it is on an opt-in only basis. We apologize for any confusion and inconvenience to our customers.”
Since opting out of the sneaky JavaScript injection (before the company changed its policy), all three of my websites are now loading much quicker which shows what a dubious practice this was in the first place. This was discovered by Igor Kromin and you can read his GoDaddy is sneakily injecting JavaScript into your website and how to stop it post here.
I’ve also made some other changes to speed up the loading times, but I’ll highlight those in another piece very shortly.
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I’m tired of websites telling me what data they don’t collect – (personally identifiable data) – instead of what data they actually do collect (unique identifiable data).
There’s a dam good reason that the term ‘fingerprinting’ is used when referring to data collection.