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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/

• On-premise analytics demand grows as Google Analytics GDPR uncertainties continue

  7 janvier 2020, par Jake Thornton — Privacy

  The 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.

  DOWNLOAD MATOMO (FREE)

  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.

  >> Matomo Analytics vs Google Analytics

• Today we celebrate Data Privacy Day 2019

  28 janvier 2019, par Jake Thornton — Privacy
  Today we celebrate Data Privacy Day 2019 !!!

  What is Data Privacy Day ?

  Wikipedia tells us that : The purpose of Data Privacy Day is to raise awareness and promote privacy and data protection best practices.

  Our personal data is our online identity. When you think what personal data means – our phone records, credit card transactions, GPS position, IP addresses, browsing history and so much more. All so valuable and personal to us as human beings.

  That’s why we cannot take our personal data online for granted. We have a right to know which websites collect our data and how it’s then used, something that’s often not visible or easily recognisable when browsing.

  What Data Privacy Day means to Matomo

  Every year the team at Matomo uses this day as a chance to reflect on how far the Matomo (formerly Piwik) project has come. But then also reflect how far we still have to go in spreading the message that our data and personal information online matters.

  2018 saw the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect people’s data online. As a team, Matomo was at the forefront of this development in the analytics space and have since built a GDPR Manager to ensure our users can be fully compliant with the GDPR.

  With every new release of Matomo, we are ensuring that security continues to be at the highest standard and we will continue to be committed to our bug bounty program. Our most recent release of Matomo 3.8.0 alone added a Two Factor Authentication (2FA) feature and a password brute force prevention.

  What next for Matomo and data privacy ?

  As always, security is a top priority for every new release of Matomo and continues to only get better and better. We have a duty to spread our message further that the protection of personal data matters and today is a vital reminder of that. We are, and forever will be, the #1 open-source (and free to use) web analytics platform in the world that fully respects user privacy and gives our users 100% data ownership.

  In 2018 we changed our name, we updated our logo and website, and advanced our platform to compete with the most powerful web analytics tools in the world, all so we can spread our message further and continue our mission.

  Come with us on this exciting journey. Now is the time to take back control of your data and let’s continue creating a safer web for everyone.

  Please help us spread this message.