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• Your introduction to personally identifiable information : What is PII ?

  15 janvier 2020, par Joselyn Khor — Analytics Tips, Privacy, Security
  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 ?

  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 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.

  If you’re using a GDPR compliant tool like Matomo, learn how you can stop processing such personal data

  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/

• What’s new in Piwik 2.16.0 ?

  1er février 2016, par Matthieu Aubry — About, Development, Uncategorized

  In this blog post we showcase what is new in Piwik 2.16.0 and why you should upgrade your Piwik to this latest release !

  Piwik 2.16.0 is currently in Release Candidate and you can already use it by following these simple instructions. Piwik 2.16.0 will be officially released in a few days.

  To see the list of all 250+ changes, read the Piwik 2.16.0 changelog.

  Long Term Support for Piwik 2.X

  Piwik 2.16.0 is our Long Term Support version for Piwik 2. Learn more about Piwik LTS.

  New : Custom Dimensions feature

  With Custom Dimensions you can assign any custom data to your visitors or actions (like pages, events, …) and then visualize the reports of how many visits, conversions, pageviews, etc. there were for each Custom Dimension. They are similar to Custom Variables see the comparison of Custom Dimensions and Custom Variables.

  The new Custom Dimensions plugin is available on the Piwik Marketplace.

  Learn more about creating, tracking, reporting, managing, segmenting custom dimensions in the Custom Dimensions user guide.

  

  

  

  View the list of all visitors who reached a specific goal

  All Goal reports now include a link below the Goal report summary, that lets you see in one click all users that have converted any of your Goals :

  

  Events reports : option to view all columns : min, max and avg values

  By default in Actions > Events report, the columns displayed are “Total events” (Total number of events) and “Total value” (the sum of event values). It is now possible to click on the footer icon to view more detailed columns about event values : minimum event value, maximum event value, and average event value.

  

  Allow zoom to country in realtime visitor map

  In the real time map in Piwik (which displays your users activity appearing in real time !), it is now possible to zoom on a given country :

  

  Export all Records : new ‘all’ option in the Row limit selector

  It is now possible to export all of the data in your reports directly from the user interface ! Select ‘all’ in the row limit selector before exporting your data reports :

  

  New themes on the Marketplace !

  Feel like a change of colors ? Try out the new community submitted Piwik Themes on the Marketplace ! Learn how to install a new theme in Piwik (in only a few clicks).

  

  Let Super User view and edit segments created by other users

  As a Super User of Piwik, it can be very useful to view all Custom Segments created by all users. Starting in Piwik 2.16.0 any Super User can now view all Segments for a given website in the Segment selector :

  • Segments that are shared with All users will now appear below a section “Shared with you :” (a segment can be shared to all users by any admin user by selecting “This segment is visible to All Users” in the Segment editor)
  • Segments that are not shared with anyone are now also visible under the section “Visible to you because you have Super User access :”

  

  New segment ‘deviceBrand’ to segment by Device Brand

  You can now segment by device brands such as Apple, Samsung, LG, Google, Nokia, Sony, Lenovo, Alcatel, etc. The complete list of device brands you can use is listed on the Segmentation developer guide.

  

  New segment ‘actionType’ to view only particular Actions types (pagesviews, downloads, outlinks, events…)

  Use the new “Action type” segment to view only particular actions such as : pageviews, contents, sitesearches, events, outlinks and downloads.

  

  New segment : ‘actionUrl’ to view any actions that matches a given URL

  Use the new “Action URL” segment to view any action that matches a given URL, whether they are Pageviews, Site searches, Contents, Downloads or Events.

  

  New segment operators : “Starts with” and “Ends with”

  The new segment operators “Starts with” and “Ends with” can come handy when creating Custom Segments, and complement well the existing segment operators : Contains, Does not contain, Equals, Not equals, Greater than or equal to, Less than or equal to.

  

  Learn more about Segmentation in our user guides or in the Segmentation developer guide.

  Making Piwik more accessible

  Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of removing barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to applications or websites, by people with disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users have equal access to information and functionality.

  In Piwik 2.16.0, and with the help of high school students from the Catalyst Academy, we have made several improvements that make Piwik more accessible :

  • Menu now include the ARIA metadata (to make menus easier to navigate and use)
  • Page titles and various key tooltips have been improved (to give a better context to the data)
  • Keyboard access has been much improvement and Piwik is starting to be usable with the keyboard ! (this is very useful as many users are not able to use a mouse, and they should be able to view Piwik reports with the keyboard only)
  • ‘Skip to main content’ link (when pressing the TAB key) now skips the cursor to the page content.
  • Search bar was further improved : try it by pressing the ‘f’ key (useful to open any Piwik report or page without using the mouse)

  New user preference : display times either as 24h format or AM/PM format

  Users can now select whether times should be displayed in 24h format (16:20) or in AM/PM format (4:20pm)

  

  Other admins and Super Users are not visible to users with ‘admin’ permissions anymore

  Piwik 2.16.0 just became even more respectful of your privacy : any user you created and assigned an “admin” permission will not be able to view all other usernames anymore. This change was requested by many Piwik users who rightfully preferred not to disclose all usernames to any ‘admin’ user.

  As a result of this change, when a user with ‘admin’ permission (admin user) wants to give additional permission to another user (target user), the admin user will now need to know the target username and enter it in the Manage Users interface :

  

  New Config file viewer

  A new menu entry Administration > Diagnostics > Config file, lets Super Users view all config values in the UI :

  This new screen serves several purposes :

  • help Piwik administrators discover and learn about all the possible config file settings that Piwik offers.
  • let Super Users and Admins easily view any overridden config.ini.php INI setting without having to open the config file on the server.

  

  New report ‘Personal settings > Custom Variables’ displays custom variable usage

  A new report visible to Super Users lets you see how your Custom Variables slots are being used, which ones are still unused, and how many times a given custom variable name was used.

  

  Learn more about Custom Variables.

  Improvements to Heartbeat feature to accurately count time spent on the last page

  The heartbeat feature which lets you accurately track how long do visitors spend on your website, has been improved in 2.16.0. If you would like to measure how long do people spend on your pages (even if they don’t interact with your website or app), then consider using the heartbeat feature. Learn more in our guide Accurately measure the time spent on each page.

  

  New AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin
  

  AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin was created for those who would like to measure how their Piwik services is being used. This plugin also sends anonymised tracking data to our demo-anonymous.piwik.org which will help us learn how your Piwik is used and how we could improve the application. Learn more about AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin.

  

  Show a warning when Piwik is used as a SuperUser via HTTP

  It is highly recommended to use HTTPS (SSL) for your Piwik server. If you are logged in as a Super User and viewing any Administration pages, you will now see a warning notification message at the top of the screen inviting you to use HTTPS :

  

  MySQL 5.7+ support

  The awesome Piwik community has helped us identify several issues with MySQL 5.7 support and Piwik is now fully compatible with the latest MySQL version 5.7+. Piwik is officially compatible with MySQL >= 4.1 and up to Mysql 5.7 ! Piwik is also compatible with MariaDB.

  

  Better detection of new devices and robots

  Our Device Detector library can now detect many new types of devices : smart TVs, new tablets and mobile phones, and more. New bots were added to our list of bots to keep your analytics report meaningful.

  Learn more : What Device Detector is able to detect, About Device Detector.

  New Referrer Spammers

  Every week we keep updating our community-list of referrer spammers. More than 50 new spammers were added since the last Piwik release !

  Note that the list of referrer spammer is automatically updated every week in your Piwik, so you need to wait at most one week to benefit from the very latest list.

  Learn more about Stopping Referrer Spam in Analytics reports.

  

  Ability to support new SMS providers to send Scheduled Reports by text message

  When you create scheduled reports in Piwik, you can specify one or several email addresses (to send reports by email) and you can also configure phone numbers (so your reports are sent to your phone via text message). So far we only support one SMS Provider “Clockwork SMS” but it is now possible for anyone to create a very simple plugin that adds a new SMS Provider to Piwik.

  A new SMS Provider plugin was released on the Marketplace : FreeMobileMessaging. If you have a favorite SMS Provider, we encourage you to create a new plugin for it !

  Piwik Consulting mentions

  A few new mentions of Piwik Consultants were added into Piwik to let users know that they can get Professional Help, and additional services and products. For example a new widget was added to the default dashboard. If you provide your Piwik service to your own clients, maybe you would like to remove the Professional services widget and other ads, see this FAQ : How do I remove from Piwik the links to “Piwik Consultants” or to “Professional Services” ?

  Stability, Reliability and Performance

  Dozens of other bugs were fixed (including several Major bugs) and many small improvements are included in this release. All these changes make Piwik more stable and reliable, as well as easier to troubleshoot and maintain. We are proud to be able to offer Piwik 2.16.0 as our Long Term Support release !

  If you have any feedback, questions, suggestion, or bug to report, please join our Piwik Community Forums.

  We hope you will love this 2.16.0 release as much as we loved making it.

  Happy Analytics !

• What’s new in Piwik 2.16.0 ?

  1er février 2016, par Matthieu Aubry — About, Development, Uncategorized

  In this blog post we showcase what is new in Piwik 2.16.0 and why you should upgrade your Piwik to this latest release !

  Piwik 2.16.0 is currently in Release Candidate and you can already use it by following these simple instructions. Piwik 2.16.0 will be officially released in a few days.

  To see the list of all 250+ changes, read the Piwik 2.16.0 changelog.

  Long Term Support for Piwik 2.X

  Piwik 2.16.0 is our Long Term Support version for Piwik 2. Learn more about Piwik LTS.

  New : Custom Dimensions feature

  With Custom Dimensions you can assign any custom data to your visitors or actions (like pages, events, …) and then visualize the reports of how many visits, conversions, pageviews, etc. there were for each Custom Dimension. They are similar to Custom Variables see the comparison of Custom Dimensions and Custom Variables.

  The new Custom Dimensions plugin is available on the Piwik Marketplace.

  Learn more about creating, tracking, reporting, managing, segmenting custom dimensions in the Custom Dimensions user guide.

  

  

  

  View the list of all visitors who reached a specific goal

  All Goal reports now include a link below the Goal report summary, that lets you see in one click all users that have converted any of your Goals :

  

  Events reports : option to view all columns : min, max and avg values

  By default in Actions > Events report, the columns displayed are “Total events” (Total number of events) and “Total value” (the sum of event values). It is now possible to click on the footer icon to view more detailed columns about event values : minimum event value, maximum event value, and average event value.

  

  Allow zoom to country in realtime visitor map

  In the real time map in Piwik (which displays your users activity appearing in real time !), it is now possible to zoom on a given country :

  

  Export all Records : new ‘all’ option in the Row limit selector

  It is now possible to export all of the data in your reports directly from the user interface ! Select ‘all’ in the row limit selector before exporting your data reports :

  

  New themes on the Marketplace !

  Feel like a change of colors ? Try out the new community submitted Piwik Themes on the Marketplace ! Learn how to install a new theme in Piwik (in only a few clicks).

  

  Let Super User view and edit segments created by other users

  As a Super User of Piwik, it can be very useful to view all Custom Segments created by all users. Starting in Piwik 2.16.0 any Super User can now view all Segments for a given website in the Segment selector :

  • Segments that are shared with All users will now appear below a section “Shared with you :” (a segment can be shared to all users by any admin user by selecting “This segment is visible to All Users” in the Segment editor)
  • Segments that are not shared with anyone are now also visible under the section “Visible to you because you have Super User access :”

  

  New segment ‘deviceBrand’ to segment by Device Brand

  You can now segment by device brands such as Apple, Samsung, LG, Google, Nokia, Sony, Lenovo, Alcatel, etc. The complete list of device brands you can use is listed on the Segmentation developer guide.

  

  New segment ‘actionType’ to view only particular Actions types (pagesviews, downloads, outlinks, events…)

  Use the new “Action type” segment to view only particular actions such as : pageviews, contents, sitesearches, events, outlinks and downloads.

  

  New segment : ‘actionUrl’ to view any actions that matches a given URL

  Use the new “Action URL” segment to view any action that matches a given URL, whether they are Pageviews, Site searches, Contents, Downloads or Events.

  

  New segment operators : “Starts with” and “Ends with”

  The new segment operators “Starts with” and “Ends with” can come handy when creating Custom Segments, and complement well the existing segment operators : Contains, Does not contain, Equals, Not equals, Greater than or equal to, Less than or equal to.

  

  Learn more about Segmentation in our user guides or in the Segmentation developer guide.

  Making Piwik more accessible

  Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of removing barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to applications or websites, by people with disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users have equal access to information and functionality.

  In Piwik 2.16.0, and with the help of high school students from the Catalyst Academy, we have made several improvements that make Piwik more accessible :

  • Menu now include the ARIA metadata (to make menus easier to navigate and use)
  • Page titles and various key tooltips have been improved (to give a better context to the data)
  • Keyboard access has been much improvement and Piwik is starting to be usable with the keyboard ! (this is very useful as many users are not able to use a mouse, and they should be able to view Piwik reports with the keyboard only)
  • ‘Skip to main content’ link (when pressing the TAB key) now skips the cursor to the page content.
  • Search bar was further improved : try it by pressing the ‘f’ key (useful to open any Piwik report or page without using the mouse)

  New user preference : display times either as 24h format or AM/PM format

  Users can now select whether times should be displayed in 24h format (16:20) or in AM/PM format (4:20pm)

  

  Other admins and Super Users are not visible to users with ‘admin’ permissions anymore

  Piwik 2.16.0 just became even more respectful of your privacy : any user you created and assigned an “admin” permission will not be able to view all other usernames anymore. This change was requested by many Piwik users who rightfully preferred not to disclose all usernames to any ‘admin’ user.

  As a result of this change, when a user with ‘admin’ permission (admin user) wants to give additional permission to another user (target user), the admin user will now need to know the target username and enter it in the Manage Users interface :

  

  New Config file viewer

  A new menu entry Administration > Diagnostics > Config file, lets Super Users view all config values in the UI :

  This new screen serves several purposes :

  • help Piwik administrators discover and learn about all the possible config file settings that Piwik offers.
  • let Super Users and Admins easily view any overridden config.ini.php INI setting without having to open the config file on the server.

  

  New report ‘Personal settings > Custom Variables’ displays custom variable usage

  A new report visible to Super Users lets you see how your Custom Variables slots are being used, which ones are still unused, and how many times a given custom variable name was used.

  

  Learn more about Custom Variables.

  Improvements to Heartbeat feature to accurately count time spent on the last page

  The heartbeat feature which lets you accurately track how long do visitors spend on your website, has been improved in 2.16.0. If you would like to measure how long do people spend on your pages (even if they don’t interact with your website or app), then consider using the heartbeat feature. Learn more in our guide Accurately measure the time spent on each page.

  

  New AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin
  

  AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin was created for those who would like to measure how their Piwik services is being used. This plugin also sends anonymised tracking data to our demo-anonymous.piwik.org which will help us learn how your Piwik is used and how we could improve the application. Learn more about AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin.

  

  Show a warning when Piwik is used as a SuperUser via HTTP

  It is highly recommended to use HTTPS (SSL) for your Piwik server. If you are logged in as a Super User and viewing any Administration pages, you will now see a warning notification message at the top of the screen inviting you to use HTTPS :

  

  MySQL 5.7+ support

  The awesome Piwik community has helped us identify several issues with MySQL 5.7 support and Piwik is now fully compatible with the latest MySQL version 5.7+. Piwik is officially compatible with MySQL >= 4.1 and up to Mysql 5.7 ! Piwik is also compatible with MariaDB.

  

  Better detection of new devices and robots

  Our Device Detector library can now detect many new types of devices : smart TVs, new tablets and mobile phones, and more. New bots were added to our list of bots to keep your analytics report meaningful.

  Learn more : What Device Detector is able to detect, About Device Detector.

  New Referrer Spammers

  Every week we keep updating our community-list of referrer spammers. More than 50 new spammers were added since the last Piwik release !

  Note that the list of referrer spammer is automatically updated every week in your Piwik, so you need to wait at most one week to benefit from the very latest list.

  Learn more about Stopping Referrer Spam in Analytics reports.

  

  Ability to support new SMS providers to send Scheduled Reports by text message

  When you create scheduled reports in Piwik, you can specify one or several email addresses (to send reports by email) and you can also configure phone numbers (so your reports are sent to your phone via text message). So far we only support one SMS Provider “Clockwork SMS” but it is now possible for anyone to create a very simple plugin that adds a new SMS Provider to Piwik.

  A new SMS Provider plugin was released on the Marketplace : FreeMobileMessaging. If you have a favorite SMS Provider, we encourage you to create a new plugin for it !

  Piwik PRO mentions

  A few new mentions of Piwik PRO were added into Piwik to let users know that they can get Professional Help, and additional services and products. For example a new widget was added to the default dashboard. If you provide your Piwik service to your own clients, maybe you would like to remove the Piwik PRO widget and other ads, see this FAQ : How do I remove from Piwik the links to “Piwik PRO” or to “Professional Services” ?

  Stability, Reliability and Performance

  Dozens of other bugs were fixed (including several Major bugs) and many small improvements are included in this release. All these changes make Piwik more stable and reliable, as well as easier to troubleshoot and maintain. We are proud to be able to offer Piwik 2.16.0 as our Long Term Support release !

  If you have any feedback, questions, suggestion, or bug to report, please join our Piwik Community Forums.

  We hope you will love this 2.16.0 release as much as we loved making it.

  Happy Analytics !