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Data Privacy Day 2020
27 janvier 2020, par Matthieu Aubry — PrivacyIt’s January 28th which means it’s Data Privacy Day!
Today is an important day for the Matomo team as we reflect on our mission and our goals for 2020. This year I wanted to send a video message to all Matomo users, community members and customers.
Check it out (full transcript below)
A video message from Matomo founder, Matthieu Aubry
Privacy-friendly alternatives
- NoMoreGoogle:
a comprehensive list giving you options for other privacy-friendly alternatives. - Switching.Software:
Ethical alternatives to popular sites and apps. - Web browser:
Firefox
Brave
Vivaldi - Search engine:
DuckDuckGo
Qwant - File sharing:
Nextcloud - Email provider:
ProtonMail
Mailfence
Tutanota
Video transcript
Hey everyone,
Matthieu here, Founder of Matomo.
Today is one of the most significant days of the year for the Matomo team – it’s Data Privacy Day. And so I wanted to quickly reflect on our mission and the significance of this day.
In today’s busy online world where data is king, this day is an important reminder of being vigilant in protecting our personal information online.
Matomo began 12 years ago as an open-source alternative to Google Analytics – the goal was, and still is to give full control of data back to users.
In 2020, we are determined to see through this commitment. We will keep building a powerful and ethical web analytics platform that focuses on privacy protection, data ownership, and provides value to all Matomo users and customers.
And what’s fantastic is to see the rise of other quality software companies offering privacy-friendly alternatives for web browsers, search engines, file sharing, email providers, all with a similar mission. And with these products now widely available, we encourage you to take back control of all your online activities and begin this new decade with a resolution to stay safe online.
I’ll provide you with some links below the video to check out these privacy-friendly alternatives. If you have a website and want to gain valuable insights on the visitors while owning your data, join us!
Matomo Analytics On-Premise is and always will be free to download and install on your own servers and on your own terms.
Also feel free to join our active community or spread the word to your friends and network about the importance of data privacy.
Thank you all and wishing you a great 2020!
For more information on how Matomo protects the privacy of your users, visit: https://matomo.org/privacy/
Do you have privacy concerns?
What better day than today to speak up! What privacy concerns have you experienced?
- NoMoreGoogle:
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How to keep personally identifiable information safe
23 janvier 2020, par Joselyn KhorThe protection of personally identifiable information (PII) is important both for individuals, whose privacy may be compromised, and for businesses that may have their reputation ruined or be liable if PII is wrongly accessed, used, or shared.
Curious about what PII is? Here’s your introduction to personally identifiable information.
Due to hacking, data leaks or data thievery, PII acquired can be combined with other pieces of information to form a more complete picture of you. On an individual level, this puts you at risk of identity theft, credit card theft or other harm caused by the fraudulent use of your personal information.
On a business level, for companies who breach data privacy laws – like Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting of millions of FB profiles – the action leads to an erosion of trust. It can also impact your financial position as heavy fines can be imposed for the illegal use and processing of personally identifiable information.
So what can you do to ensure PII compliance?
On an individual level:
- Don’t give your data away so easily. Although long, it’s worthwhile to read through privacy policies to make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.
- Don’t just click ‘agree’ when faced with consent screens, as consent screens are majorly flawed. Users mostly always opt in without reading and without being properly informed what they opt in to.
- Did you know you’re most likely being tracked from website to website? For example, Google can identify you across visits and websites. One of the things you can do is to disable third party cookies by default. Businesses can also use privacy friendly analytics which halt such tracking.
- Use strong passwords.
- Be wary of public wifi – hackers can easily access your PII or sensitive data. Use a VPN (virtual private network), which lets you create a secure connection to a server of your choosing. This allows you to browse the internet in a safe manner.
A PII compliance checklist for businesses/organisations:
- Identify where all PII exists and is stored – review and make sure this is in a safe environment.
- Identify laws that apply to you (GDPR, California privacy law, HIPAA) and follow your legal obligations.
- Create operational safeguards – policies and procedures for handling PII at an organisation level; and building awareness to focus on the protection of PII.
- Encrypt databases and repositories where such info is kept.
- Create privacy-specific safeguards in the way your organisation collects, maintains, uses, and disseminates data so you protect the confidentiality of the data.
- Minimise the use, collection, and retention of PII – only collect and keep PII if it’s necessary for you to perform your legal business function.
- Conduct privacy impact assessments (PIA) to find and prevent privacy risks (identify what and why it’s to be collected; how the information will be secured etc.).
- De-identify within the scope of your data collection and analytics tools.
- Anonymise data.
- Keep your privacy policy updated.
- Pseudonymisation.
- A more comprehensive guide for businesses can be found here: https://iapp.org/media/pdf/knowledge_center/NIST_Protecting_PII.pdf
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Your introduction to personally identifiable information : What is PII ?
When it comes to personally identifiable information (PII), people are becoming more concerned with data privacy. Identifiable information can be used for illegal purposes like identity theft and fraud.
So how can you protect yourself as an innocent web browser?
If you’re a website owner – how do you protect users and your company from falling prey to privacy breaches?
As one of the most trusted analytics companies, we feel our readers would benefit from being as informed as possible about data privacy issues and PII. Learn how you can keep yours or others’ information safe.
Table of Contents
What does PII stand for?
PII acronym
PII is an acronym for personally identifiable information.
PII definition
Personally identifiable information (PII) is a term mainly used in the United States.
The appendix of OMB M-10-23 (Guidance for Agency Use of Third-Party Website and Applications) gives this definition for PII:
“The term ‘personally identifiable information’ refers to information which can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, such as their name, social security number, biometric records, etc. alone, or when combined with other personal or identifying information which is linked or linkable to a specific individual, such as date and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, etc.”
What can be considered personally identifiable information (PII)? Some PII examples:
- Full name/usernames
- Home address/mailing address
- Email address
- Credit card numbers
- Date of birth
- Phone numbers
- Login details
- Precise locations
- Account numbers
- Passwords
- Security codes (including biometric records)
- Personal identification numbers
- Driver license number
- Get a more comprehensive list here
What’s non-PII?
Who is affected by the exploitation of PII?
Anyone can be affected by the misuse of personal data. Websites can compromise your privacy by mishandling or illegally selling/sharing your data. That may lead identity theft, account fraud and account takeovers. The fear is falling victim to such fraudulent activity.
PII can also be an issue when employees have access to the database and the data is not encrypted. For example, anyone working in a bank can access your accounts; and anyone working at Facebook can read your messages. This shows how privacy breaches can easily happen when employees have access to PII.
Website owner’s responsibility for data privacy (PII and analytics)
If you’re using a web analytics tool like Google Analytics or Matomo, best practise is to not collect PII if possible. This is to better respect your website visitor’s privacy.
If you work in an industry which needs people to share personal information (e.g. healthcare, security industries, public sector), then you must collect and handle this data securely.
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology states: “The likelihood of harm caused by a breach involving PII is greatly reduced if an organisation minimises the amount of PII it uses, collects, and stores. For example, an organisation should only request PII in a new form if the PII is absolutely necessary.”
How you’re held accountable remains up to the privacy laws of the country you’re doing business in. Make sure you are fully aware of the privacy and data protection laws that relate specifically to you.
To reduce the risk of privacy breaches, try collecting as little PII as you can; purging it as soon as you can; and making sure your IT security is updated and protected against security threats.
With data collection tools like web analytics, data may be tracked through features like User ID, custom variables, and custom dimensions. Sometimes they are also harder to identify when they are present, for example, in page URLs, page titles, or referrers URLs. So make sure you’re optimising your web analytics tools’ settings to ensure you’re asking your users for consent and respecting users’ privacy.
PII, GDPR and businesses in the US/EU
You may get confused when considering PII and GDPR (which applies in the EU). The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives people in the EU more rights over “personal data” – which covers more identifiers than PII (more on PII vs personal data below). GDPR restricts the collection and processing of personal data so businesses need to handle this personal data carefully.
According to the GDPR, you can be fined up to 4% of their yearly revenue for data/privacy breaches or non-compliance.
In the US, there isn’t one overarching data protection law, but there are hundreds of laws on both the federal and state levels to protect PII of US residents. US Congress has enacted industry-specific statutes related to data privacy like HIPAA. Recently state of California also passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
To be on the safe side, if you’re using analytics, follow matters relating to “personal data” in the GDPR. It covers more when it comes to protecting user privacy. GDPR rules still apply whenever an EU citizen visits any non EU site (that processes personal data).
Personally identifiable information (PII) vs personal data
PII and “personal data” aren’t used interchangeably. All personal data can be PII, but not all PII can be defined as personal data.
The definition of “personal data” according to the GDPR:
This means “personal data” covers more identifiers, including online identifiers. Examples include: IP addresses and URL names. As well as seemingly “innocent” data like height, job position, company etc.
What’s seen as personal data depends on the context. If a piece of information can be combined with others to establish someone’s identity then that can be considered personal data.
Under GDPR, when processing personal data, you need explicit consent. So best to be compliant according to GDPR definitions of “personal data” not just what’s considered “PII”.
How do you keep PII safe?
- Try not to give your data away so easily. Read through terms and conditions.
- Don’t just click ‘agree’ when faced with consent screens, as consent screens are majorly flawed.
- Disable third party cookies by default.
- Use strong passwords.
- Be wary of public wifi – hackers can easily access your PII or sensitive data. Use a VPN (virtual private network)
- Read more on how to keep PII safe. For businesses here’s a checklist on PII compliance.
How Matomo deals with PII and personal data
Although Matomo Analytics is a web analytics tool that tracks user activity on your website, we take privacy and PII very seriously – on both our Cloud and On-Premise offerings.
If you’re using Matomo and would like to know how you can be fully GDPR compliant and protect user privacy, read more:
- Learn how to not process any personally identifiable information – Anonymise IP addresses, user IDs, and order IDs
- Matomo protects user privacy by talking the talk and walking the walk
- Stay ahead of the GDPR with a privacy-respecting analytics platform
- 11 ways Matomo helps you protect your visitor’s privacy
Disclaimer
We are not lawyers and don’t claim to be. The information provided here is to help give an introduction to issues you may encounter when dealing with PII. We encourage every business and website to take data privacy seriously and discuss these issues with your lawyer if you have any concerns.
Additional resources:
- https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/identity-theft-statistics.html#identity-theft-trends-in-2019
- https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection_en
- https://iclg.com/practice-areas/data-protection-laws-and-regulations/usa
- https://www.csoonline.com/article/3215864/how-to-protect-personally-identifiable-information-pii-under-gdpr.html
- https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/key-definitions/what-is-personal-data/
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What is PII ? Your introduction to personally identifiable information
Most websites you visit collect information about you via tools like Google Analytics and Matomo – sometimes collecting personally identifiable information (PII).
When it comes to PII, people are becoming more concerned about data privacy. Identifiable information can be used for illegal purposes like identity theft and fraud.
So how can you protect yourself as an innocent internet browser? In the case of website owners – how do you protect users and your company from falling prey to privacy breaches?
As one of the most trusted analytics companies, we feel our readers would benefit from being as informed as possible about data privacy issues and PII. Learn what it means, and what you can do to keep yours or others’ information safe.
Table of Contents
What does PII stand for?
PII acronym
PII is an acronym for personally identifiable information.
PII definition
Personally identifiable information (PII) is a term used predominantly in the United States.
The appendix of OMB M-10-23 (Guidance for Agency Use of Third-Party Website and Applications) gives this definition for PII:
“The term ‘personally identifiable information’ refers to information which can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, such as their name, social security number, biometric records, etc. alone, or when combined with other personal or identifying information which is linked or linkable to a specific individual, such as date and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, etc.”
What can be considered personally identifiable information (PII)? Some PII examples:
- Full name/usernames
- Home address/mailing address
- Email address
- Credit card numbers
- Date of birth
- Phone numbers
- Login details
- Precise locations
- Account numbers
- Passwords
- Security codes (including biometric records)
- Personal identification numbers
- Driver license number
- Get a more comprehensive list here
What’s non-PII?
Anonymous information, or information that can’t be traced back to an individual, can be considered non-PII.
Who is affected by the exploitation of PII?
Anyone can be affected by the exploitation of personal data, where you have identity theft, account fraud and account takeovers. When websites resort to illegally selling or sharing your data and compromising your privacy, the fear is falling victim to such fraudulent activity.
PII can also be an issue when employees have access to the database and the data is not encrypted. For example, anyone working in a bank can access your accounts; anyone working at Facebook may be able to read your messages. This shows how privacy breaches can easily happen when employees have access to PII.
Website owner’s responsibility for data privacy (PII and analytics)
To respect your website visitor’s privacy, best practice is to avoid collecting PII whenever possible. If you work in an industry which requires people to disclose personal information (e.g. healthcare, security industries, public sector), then you must ensure this data is collected and handled securely.
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology states: “The likelihood of harm caused by a breach involving PII is greatly reduced if an organisation minimises the amount of PII it uses, collects, and stores. For example, an organisation should only request PII in a new form if the PII is absolutely necessary.”
How you’re held accountable remains up to the privacy laws of the country you’re doing business in. Make sure you are fully aware of the privacy and data protection laws that relate specifically to you.
To reduce the risk of privacy breaches, try collecting as little PII as you can; purging it as soon as you can; and making sure your IT security is updated and protected against security threats.
If you’re using data collection tools like web analytics, data may be tracked through features like User ID, custom variables, and custom dimensions. Sometimes they are also harder to identify when they are present, for example, in page URLs, page titles, or referrers URLs. So make sure you’re optimising your web analytics tools’ settings to ensure you’re asking your users for consent and respecting users’ privacy.
PII, GDPR and businesses in the US/EU
Because PII is broad, you may run into confusion when considering PII and GDPR (which applies in the EU). The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides more safeguards for user privacy.
GDPR grants people in the EU more rights concerning their “personal data” (more on PII vs personal data below). In the EU the GDPR restricts the collection and processing of personal data. The repercussions are severe penalties and fines for privacy infringements. Businesses are required to handle this personal data carefully. You can be fined up to 4% of their yearly revenue for data breaches or non-compliance.
Although there isn’t an overarching data protection law in the US, there are hundreds of laws on both the federal and state levels to protect the personal data of US residents. US Congress has also enacted industry-specific statutes related to data privacy, and the state of California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act.
To be on the safe side, if you are using analytics, follow matters relating to “personal data” in the GDPR. It’s all-encompassing when it comes to protecting user privacy. GDPR rules still apply whenever an EU citizen visits any non EU site (that processes personal data).
Personally identifiable information (PII) vs personal data
PII and “personal data” aren’t used interchangeably. All personal data can be PII, but not all PII can be defined as personal data.
The definition of “personal data” according to the GDPR:
This means “personal data” encompasses a greater number of identifiers which include the online sphere. Examples include: IP addresses and URL names. As well as seemingly “innocent” data like height, job position, company etc.
What’s considered personal data depends on the context. If a piece of information can be combined with others to establish someone’s identity then that can be considered personal data.
Under GDPR, when processing personal data, you need explicit consent. You need to ensure you’re compliant according to GDPR definitions of “personal data” not just what’s considered “PII”.
How Matomo deals with PII and personal data
Although Matomo Analytics is a web analytics software that tracks user activity on your website, we take privacy and PII very seriously – on both our Cloud and On-Premise offerings.
If you’re using Matomo and would like to know how you can be fully GDPR compliant and protect user privacy, read more:
- Learn how to not process any personally identifiable information – Anonymise IP addresses, user IDs, and order IDs
- Matomo protects user privacy by talking the talk and walking the walk
- Stay ahead of the GDPR with a privacy-respecting analytics platform
- 11 ways Matomo helps you protect your visitor’s privacy
Disclaimer
We are not lawyers and don’t claim to be. The information provided here is to help give an introduction to issues you may encounter when dealing with PII. We encourage every business and website to take data privacy seriously and discuss these issues with your lawyer if you have any concerns.
Additional resources:
- https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/identity-theft-statistics.html#identity-theft-trends-in-2019
- https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection_en
- https://iclg.com/practice-areas/data-protection-laws-and-regulations/usa
- https://www.csoonline.com/article/3215864/how-to-protect-personally-identifiable-information-pii-under-gdpr.html
- https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/key-definitions/what-is-personal-data/
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On-premise analytics demand grows as Google Analytics GDPR uncertainties continue
7 janvier 2020, par Jake Thornton — PrivacyThe Google Analytics GDPR relationship is a complicated one. Website owners in states like Berlin in Germany are now required to ask users for consent to collect their data. This doesn’t make for the friendliest user-experience and often the website visitor will simply click “no.”
The problem Google Analytics now presents website owners in the EU is with more visitors clicking “no”, the less accurate your data will become.
Why do you need to ask your visitors for consent?
At this stage it’s simply because Google Analytics collects data for its own purposes. An example of this is using your visitor’s personal data for retargeting purposes across their advertising platforms like Google Ads and YouTube.
Google’s Privacy & Terms states: “when you visit a website that uses advertising services like AdSense, including analytics tools like Google Analytics, or embeds video content from YouTube, your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google. This includes the URL of the page you’re visiting and your IP address. We may also set cookies on your browser or read cookies that are already there. Apps that use Google advertising services also share information with Google, such as the name of the app and a unique identifier for advertising.”
The rise of hosting web analytics on-premise
Managing Google Analytics and GDPR can quickly become complicated, so there’s been an increase in website owners switching from cloud-hosted web analytics platforms, like Google Analytics, to more GDPR compliant alternatives, where you can host web analytics software on your own servers. This is called hosting web analytics on-premise.
Hosting web analytics on your own servers means:
No third-parties are involved
The visitor data your website collects is stored on your own internal infrastructure. This means no third-parties are involved and there’s no risk of personal data being used in the way Google Analytics uses it e.g. sending personal data to its advertising platforms.
When you sign up with Google Analytics you sign away control of your user’s personal data. With on-premise website analytics, you own your data and are in full control.
NOTE: Though Google Analytics uses personal data for its own purposes, not all cloud hosted web analytics platforms do this. As an example, Matomo Analytics Cloud hosted solution states that all personal data collected is not used for its own purposes and that Matomo has no rights in accessing or using this personal data.
You control where in the world your personal data is stored
Google Analytics servers are based out of USA, Europe and Asia, so where your personal data will end up is uncertain and you don’t have the option to choose which location it goes to when using free Google Analytics.
Different countries have different laws when it comes to accessing personal data. When you choose to host your web analytics on-premise, you can choose the location of your servers and where the personal data is stored.
More flexibility
With self-hosted web analytics platforms like Matomo On-Premise, you can extend the platform to do anything you want without the restrictions that cloud hosted platforms impose.
You can:
- Get full access to the source code of open-source solutions, like Matomo
- Extend the platform however you want for your business
- Get access to APIs
- Have no data limitations or restrictions
- Get RAW data access
- Have control over security
>> Read more about on-premise flexibility for web analytics here
So what does the future look like for Google Analytics and GDPR?
It’s difficult to assess this right now. How exactly GDPR is enforced is still quite unclear.
What is clear however, is now website owners in Berlin using Google Analytics are lawfully required to ask their visitors for consent to collect personal data. It has been reported that Google Analytics has already received 200,000 complaints in Germany alone and it appears this trend is likely to continue across much of the EU.
When using Google Analytics in the EU you must also ensure your privacy policy is updated so website visitors are aware that data is being collected through Google Analytics for its own purposes.
Moving to a web analytics on-premise platform
Matomo Analytics is the #1 open-source web analytics platform in the world and has been rated as an exceptional alternative to Google Analytics. Check the reviews on Capterra.
Choosing Matomo On-Premise means you can control exactly where your data is stored, you have full flexibility to customise the platform to do what you want and it’s FREE.
Matomo’s mission is to give control back to website owners and the team has designed the platform so that moving away from Google Analytics is seamless. Matomo offers most of your favourite Google Analytics features, a leaner interface to navigate, and the option to add free and paid premium features that Google Analytics can’t even offer you.
And now you can import your historical Google Analytics data directly into your Matomo with the Google Analytics Importer plugin.
And if you can’t host web analytics on your own servers ...
Hosting web analytics on-premise is not an option for all businesses as you do need the internal infrastructure and technical knowledge to host your own platform.
If you can’t self-host, then Matomo has a Cloud hosted solution you can easily install and operate like Google Analytics, which is hosted on Matomo’s servers in the EU.
The GDPR advantages of choosing Matomo Cloud over Google Analytics are:
- Servers are secure and based in the EU (strict laws forbid outside access)
- 100% data ownership – we never use data for our own purposes
- You can export your data anytime and switch to Matomo On-Premise whenever you like
- User-privacy protection
- Advanced GDPR Manager and data anonymisation features which GA doesn’t offer
Interested to learn more?
If you are wanting to learn more about why users are making the move from Google Analytics to Matomo, check out our Matomo Analytics vs Google Analytics comparison page.
