Anonymous public and card views are never recorded, causing analytics blind spots

[Ridanshi]

Summary

Analytics collection appears to depend on authenticated viewer context.

Anonymous visitors can view public profiles and cards without contributing to engagement metrics.

Affected Files

• analytics.ts
• public.ts

Root Cause

Analytics collection is gated behind user-context availability.

Requests originating from unauthenticated visitors bypass tracking entirely.

Reproduction

1. Log out.
2. Visit a public profile or card.
3. Inspect analytics records.
4. Observe that no view event is recorded.
5. Repeat while authenticated and compare results.

Expected Behavior

Public content views should be tracked regardless of authentication status.

Actual Behavior

Anonymous traffic is ignored.

Why This Is Difficult To Detect

Most testing occurs under authenticated sessions.

Anonymous analytics gaps are easy to overlook.

Production Impact

• Underreported traffic
• Misleading engagement metrics
• Inaccurate popularity calculations
• Analytics blind spots

Suggested Fix

Support anonymous view tracking while preserving privacy requirements.

Severity

Medium

[Ridanshi]

I investigated this issue and would like to work on it.

The current analytics flow appears to rely on authenticated user context and may not capture anonymous engagement accurately.

I plan to:

• review analytics collection logic
• preserve existing privacy expectations
• add support for anonymous view tracking
• add regression coverage for public traffic scenarios

Please assign this issue to me.