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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.
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Open letter to the European Parliament’s LIBE committee
28 novembre 2019, par Joselyn Khor — UncategorizedAn open letter to the European Parliament's LIBE committee
In an effort to stem the tide of external control over user privacy, Matomo has rallied with other like-minded companies like Protonmail, NextCloud, Tutanota and Mailfence, to advocate for pro-privacy changes to the European Commission’s “e-evidence” proposal.
Excerpt from the letter:
“The Commission’s e-evidence proposal threatens the competitive advantage European tech businesses have over their American counterparts by undermining the protections we can provide to our customers. It breaks with the long-standing rule that only trusted national judicial authorities can order companies to hand over customer data for criminal investigations. Instead, the Commission’s e-evidence proposal would allow any foreign law enforcement agency from across the EU to force us to hand out customer data without our own authorities doublechecking the foreign order.
“Different from American Big Tech firms, European privacy tech companies lack the resources to verify the legality of each foreign order. Because of the way the e-evidence proposal is phrased, we would not even be able to properly authenticate foreign authorities to ensure that we are not replying to a malicious actor – let alone object to an order if we found it to be unwarranted.”
Matomo Founder, Matthieu Aubry emphasises, “It is time that privacy-minded tech companies work together to defend their users, their businesses, and the values they are founded on. This is why we are supporting Privacy Tech Europe.”
Read our open letter to members of the LIBE Committee in full.
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Berlin website owners need consent for using Google Analytics
19 novembre 2019, par Joselyn Khor — UncategorizedWebsite owners in Berlin need consent for using Google Analytics
According to the Berlin Data Protection Office, if you’re a website owner collecting and sending data to third-party services (like Google Analytics) who are also using that data “for own purpose uses” in Berlin, you are now required to ask for specific consent from visitors in order to collect that information.
This means you can only use Google Analytics or similar services once you’ve gotten consent from visitors. In contrast, Matomo does not use information from Cloud or On-Premise users for “own purpose uses”.
Consent is also needed when keystrokes or mouse movements are recorded. That means you need users to consent to your usage of features like Heatmaps and Session Recordings.
It’s advised that website owners in Berlin should check their websites for third-party content and tracking mechanisms. If you do use these third-party functions that require consent, you must either get consent or remove the functions. Consent is only effective if the visitor (whose data you’re collecting) is informed and agrees to their data being processed.
Currently this applies to website owners in Berlin, and should likely be applied for the whole of Germany to be on the safe side.
Further reading:
- Learn more about Matomo’s Cloud Data Processing Agreement
- Read about asking for consent in Matomo
- To use Matomo Analytics and be compliant with the regulation we recommend you learn how to make Matomo GDPR compliant in 12 steps.
And learn more about all the features in our GDPR user guide and privacy user guide. You can also learn more about GDPR through our blog posts.
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Date and segment comparison feature
Get a clearer picture with the date and segment comparison feature
What can you do with it? What are the benefits?
Make informed decisions faster by easily comparing different segments and dates with each other.
Compare report data for multiple segments next to each other
Directly compare the behaviour of visitors from different segments e.g. customers with accounts vs. customers without accounts. Segment comparisons are a powerful way to compare different audience; learn which ones perform better; and in what way their actions differ.
Compare report data for two time periods next to each other
See how your website performs compared to the previous month/week/year. Including seeing trends over those periods. Say, your business always picks up at the same times within a year, or there’s a sag in business for every user segment over this year and the last except one.
By being able to compare date ranges you are able to get a quick overview of trends and period to period performance. Has a campaign worked better in September than in October? Get an instant look by having the side-by-side comparison in Matomo.
What is it capable of?
It lets you ask the question, “What is different?”
If you look at reports you’ll only see how people behave overall and if you look at specific segments you’ll see how they behave at face value, however, if you compare data together you’ll be quickly informed on what makes them unique. This data is still there when you don’t use the comparison feature, it’s just buried. Comparing data highlights discrepancies and leads to important questions and answers.
For example, perhaps some class of users have very low engagement on a specific day compared to the rest of your visitors, and perhaps those users are responsible for an outsized proportion of churn.
Who could benefit from it, and why?
Everyone can benefit from using it (and probably should use it). It’s yours to experiment with! You shouldn’t feel restricted to only comparing between the current and last period, or having questions before you start comparing. Follow your instincts and see what pops out when data from different segments is laid out next to each other.
Where can you find it in Matomo?
- Segment comparison is activated by the new icon in the segment selector
- Date comparison can be found in the calendar section of Matomo
- The list of active comparisons is visible at the top of the page for all pages that support comparison
- Comparisons are visible in every report that supports comparing data, and reports that do not support it will display a message saying so
How do you use it?
- To compare segments, click the icon in the segment selector
- To compare periods, click the ‘compare’ checkbox in the period selector, then select what period you want to compare it against in the dropdown (previous period, previous year, or a custom range)
- When comparisons are active, view your reports as normal
Take it away!
The comparison feature is a new tool from Matomo 3.12.0 that highlights discrepancies and differences in data that can lead to more clarity and understanding, so we’d encourage everyone to use it.
Try it out today in your Matomo and see the power behind this new data comparison mode!
