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• Your guide to cookies, web analytics, and GDPR compliance

  25 février 2020, par Joselyn Khor — Analytics Tips, Privacy, Security
  It’s been almost two years since the GDPR came into effect and turned the online world on its head. Confusion around cookies/cookie consent/cookie compliance remains till today. So we’d like to take this chance to talk more about the supposed “big bad” of the latest century. 

  Online cookies seem to have a bad reputation, but are they as bad as they seem ?

  To start, what are cookies on the internet ?

  An internet cookie a.k.a. an HTTP cookie, is a small piece of data sent from websites that is stored on your computer or mobile when you visit that site.

  Are all cookies bad ?

  No. Cookies themselves are usually harmless as they can’t infect computers with malware. 

  They can also be helpful for both websites who use them and individuals visiting those websites. For example, when online shopping, cookies on ecommerce sites keep track of what you’re shopping for. If you didn’t have that tracking, your cart would be empty every time you moved away from that site.

  For businesses/websites, cookies can be used for authentication (logins) and tracking website user experience. For example, tracking multiple visits to the same site in order to provide better experiences to customers visiting their website.

  

  The not-so-sweet types of cookies :

  Cookies that contain personal data

  Another example of a bad cookie is when cookies contain personal data directly in the cookie itself. For example, when websites store demographics or your name in a cookie ; or when a website stores survey results in a cookie. Use of cookies in these ways is considered bad practice nowadays.

  Third-party cookies
  

  They can be used by websites to learn about your visit and activity across multiple websites. Cookies can enter harmful territory when employed for “big brother” types of tracking i.e. when they’re used to build a virtual fingerprint of individuals after their activity is tracked from website to website. For example most advertising networks create third party cookies in your browser when you view an ad, which lets these advertisers track users across these websites and let companies buy more targeted ads.

  Why does Matomo use cookies ?

  

  For accurate reporting of new and returning visitors. Matomo uses cookies to store some information about visitors between visits. We also use cookies to remember if someone gave consent to tracking, or opted out of tracking. 

  Types of cookies Matomo uses :

  • Matomo by default uses first-party cookies, set on the domain of your site.
  • Cookies created by Matomo start with : _pk_ref, _pk_cvar, _pk_id, _pk_ses. See a list of all Matomo cookies : https://matomo.org/faq/general/faq_146/

  Cookie-less tracking - disable cookies and ensure cookie compliance :

  It’s possible to disable tracking cookies in Matomo by adding a line on the javascript code. When cookies are disabled, Matomo data will become slightly less accurate. Also, when cookies are disabled, there may still be a few cookies created in specific cases.

  If you disable cookies, Matomo tries to detect unique visitors by a fingerprint based on a few browser attributes : operating system, browser, browser plugins, IP address and browser language.

  By disabling tracking cookies, you may also use Matomo without needing to display a cookie consent screen. You can also keep tracking when they reject cookie consent by keeping cookies disabled.

  Cookies and the GDPR

  In some countries and according to the GDPR, websites need to provide a way for users to opt-out of all tracking, in particular tracking cookies.

  The GDPR regulates the use of cookies when they compromise an individual’s privacy. When cookies can identify an individual, it is considered personal data.

  

  Cookie compliance and the GDPR

  To be GDPR compliant you must :

  • Receive user consent before using any cookies (except strictly necessary cookies). Read more on cookies that are “clearly exempt from consent”.
  • Provide accurate and specific information about the data each cookie tracks and its purpose in plain language before consent is received.
  • Document and store consent received from users.
  • Allow users to access your service even if they refuse to allow the use of certain cookies
  • Make it as easy for users to withdraw their consent as it was for them to give their consent in the first place.

  Source : https://gdpr.eu/cookies/

  When does GDPR require cookie consent ?

  The purpose of the GDPR is to give individuals control over their personal data. As such this regulation has provisions and requirements which regulate the processing of personal data to protect the privacy of individuals. 

  This means in order to use cookies, you will sometimes need explicit consent from those individuals.

  When does GDPR not require cookie consent ?

  Then there are many cookies that generally do NOT require consent (Source : https://wikis.ec.europa.eu/display/WEBGUIDE/04.+Cookies). 

  These are :

  • user input cookies, for the duration of a session
  • authentication cookies, for the duration of a session
  • user-centric security cookies, used to detect authentication abuses and linked to the functionality explicitly requested by the user, for a limited persistent duration
  • multimedia content player session cookies, such as flash player cookies, for the duration of a session
  • load balancing session cookies and other technical cookies, for the duration of session
  • user interface customisation cookies, for a browser session or a few hours, when additional information in a prominent location is provided (e.g. “uses cookies” written next to the customisation feature)

  Tracking cookies and consent vs legitimate interest

  

  User consent is not always required :

  We understand that whenever you collect and process personal data, you need – almost always – to ask for their consent. However, there are instances where you have to process data under “legitimate interests”. The GDPR states that processing of personal data is lawful “if processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests”. This means if you have “legitimate interests” you can avoid asking for consent for collecting and processing personal information. Learn more : https://cookieinformation.com/resources/blog/what-is-legitimate-interest-under-the-gdpr 

  A lawful basis for processing personal data (proceeding with caution) :

  We’ve also written about having a lawful basis for processing personal data under GDPR with Matomo. The caveat here is you need to have a strong argument for legitimate interests. If you are processing personal data which may represent a risk to the final user, then getting consent is, for us, still the right lawful basis. If you are not sure, at the time of writing ICO is providing a tool in order to help you make this decision.

  How is Matomo Analytics GDPR compliant ?

  Matomo can be configured to automatically anonymise data so you don’t process any personal data. This allows you to completely avoid GDPR. If you decide to process personal data, Matomo provides you with 12 steps to easily comply with the GDPR guidelines.

  New developments on cookies and the GDPR

  In the early days of the GDPR, a spate of cookie management platforms (CMPs) popped up to help websites and people comply with GDPR rules around cookies.

  These have become problematic in recent years. Europe’s highest court ruled pre-checked box for cookie boxes does not give enough consent. 

  As well as that, new research suggests most cookie consent pop-ups in the EU fall short of GDPR. A new study called, ‘Dark Patterns after the GDPR’ from MIT, UCL and Aarhus University found that a vast majority of websites aren’t following GDPR rules around cookies. The study found most cookie consent pop-ups in the EU to be undermining the GDPR by finding sneaky ways to convince website visitors to click ‘accept’.

  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 cookies. 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 :

  • How do the cookie rules relate to the GDPR ? 
  • Cookies, the GDPR, and the ePrivacy Directive

• How to create a widget – Introducing the Piwik Platform

  4 septembre 2014, par Thomas Steur — Development

  This is the next post of our blog series where we introduce the capabilities of the Piwik platform (our previous post was How to create a scheduled task in Piwik). This time you’ll learn how to create a new widget. For this tutorial you will need to have basic knowledge of PHP.

  What is a widget in Piwik ?

  Widgets can be added to your dashboards or exported via a URL to embed it on any page. Most widgets in Piwik represent a report but a widget can display anything. For instance a RSS feed of your corporate news. If you prefer to have most of your business relevant data in one dashboard why not display the number of offline sales, the latest stock price, or other key metrics together with your analytics data ?

  Getting started

  In this series of posts, we assume that you have already set up your development environment. If not, visit the Piwik Developer Zone where you’ll find the tutorial Setting up Piwik.

  To summarize the things you have to do to get setup :

  • Install Piwik (for instance via git).
  • Activate the developer mode : ./console development:enable --full.
  • Generate a plugin : ./console generate:plugin --name="MyWidgetPlugin". There should now be a folder plugins/MyWidgetPlugin.
  • And activate the created plugin under Settings => Plugins.

  Let’s start creating a widget

  We start by using the Piwik Console to create a widget template :

  ./console generate:widget

  The command will ask you to enter the name of the plugin the widget should belong to. I will simply use the above chosen plugin name “MyWidgetPlugin”. It will ask you for a widget category as well. You can select any existing category, for instance “Visitors”, “Live !” or “Actions”, or you can define a new category, for instance your company name. There should now be a file plugins/MyWidgetPlugin/Widgets.php which contains already some examples to get you started easily :

  class Widgets extends \Piwik\Plugin\Widgets
  {
      /**
       * Here you can define the category the widget belongs to. You can reuse any existing widget category or define your own category.
       * @var string
       */
      protected $category = 'ExampleCompany';
   
      /**
       * Here you can add one or multiple widgets. You can add a widget by calling the method "addWidget()" and pass the name of the widget as well as a method name that should be called to render the widget. The method can be defined either directly here in this widget class or in the controller in case you want to reuse the same action for instance in the menu etc.
       */
      protected function init()
      {
          $this->addWidget('Example Widget Name', $method = 'myExampleWidget');
          $this->addWidget('Example Widget 2',    $method = 'myExampleWidget', $params = array('myparam' => 'myvalue'));
      }
   
      /**
       * This method renders a widget as defined in "init()". It's on you how to generate the content of the widget. As long as you return a string everything is fine. You can use for instance a "Piwik\View" to render a twig template. In such a case don't forget to create a twig template (eg. myViewTemplate.twig) in the "templates" directory of your plugin.
       *
       * @return string
       */
      public function myExampleWidget()
      {
          $view = new View('@MyWidgetPlugin/myViewTemplate');
          return $view->render();
      }
  }
  Télécharger

  As you might have noticed in the generated template we put emphasis on adding comments to explain you directly how to continue and where to get more information. Ideally this saves you some time and you don’t even have to search for more information on our developer pages. The category is defined in the property $category and can be changed at any time. Starting from Piwik 2.6.0 the generator will directly create a translation key if necessary to make it easy to translate the category into any language. Translations will be a topic in one of our future posts until then you can explore this feature on our Internationalization guide.

  A simple example

  We can define one or multiple widgets in the init method by calling addWidget($widgetName, $methodName). To do so we define the name of a widget which will be seen by your users as well as the name of the method that shall render the widget.

  protected $category = 'Example Company';
  
  
  
  public function init()
  
  {
  
      // Registers a widget named 'News' under the category 'Example Company'. 
  
      // The method 'myCorporateNews' will be used to render the widget.
  
      $this->addWidget('News', $method = 'myCorporateNews'); 
  
  }
  
  
  
  public function myCorporateNews()
  
  {
  
      return file_get_contents('http://example.com/news');
  
  }

  This example would display the content of the specified URL within the widget as defined in the method myCorporateNews. It’s on you how to generate the content of the widget. Any string returned by this method will be displayed within the widget. You can use for example a View to render a Twig template. For simplification we are fetching the content from another site. A more complex version would cache this content for faster performance. Caching and views will be covered in one of our future posts as well.

  

  Did you know ? To make your life as a developer as stress-free as possible the platform checks whether the registered method actually exists and whether the method is public. If not, Piwik will display a notification in the UI and advice you with the next step.

  Checking permissions

  Often you do not want to have the content of a widget visible to everyone. You can check for permissions by using one of our many convenient methods which all start with \Piwik\Piwik::checkUser*. Just to introduce some of them :

  // Make sure the current user has super user access
  
  \Piwik\Piwik::checkUserHasSuperUserAccess(); 
  
  
  
  // Make sure the current user is logged in and not anonymous
  
  \Piwik\Piwik::checkUserIsNotAnonymous(); 

  And here is an example how you can use it within your widget :

  public function myCorporateNews()
  
  {
  
      // Make sure there is an idSite URL parameter
  
      $idSite = Common::getRequestVar('idSite', null, 'int');
  
  
  
      // Make sure the user has at least view access for the specified site. This is useful if you want to display data that is related to the specified site.
  
      Piwik::checkUserHasViewAccess($idSite); 
  
  
  
      $siteUrl = \Piwik\Site::getMainUrlFor($idSite);
  
  
  
      return file_get_contents($siteUrl . '/news');
  
  }

  In case any condition is not met an exception will be thrown and an error message will be presented to the user explaining that he does not have enough permissions. You’ll find the documentation for those methods in the Piwik class reference.

  How to test a widget

  After you have created your widgets you are surely wondering how to test it. First, you should write a unit or integration test which we will cover in one of our future blog posts. Just one hint : You can use the command ./console generate:test to create a test. To manually test a widget you can add a widget to a dashboard or export it.

  Publishing your Plugin on the Marketplace

  In case you want to share your widgets with other Piwik users you can do this by pushing your plugin to a public GitHub repository and creating a tag. Easy as that. Read more about how to distribute a plugin.

  Advanced features

  Isn’t it easy to create a widget ? We never even created a file ! Of course, based on our API design principle “The complexity of our API should never exceed the complexity of your use case.” you can accomplish more if you want : You can clarify parameters that will be passed to your widget, you can create a method in the Controller instead of the Widget class to make the same method also reusable for adding it to the menu, you can assign different categories to different widgets, you can remove any widgets that were added by the Piwik core or other plugins and more.

  Would you like to know more about widgets ? Go to our Widgets class reference in the Piwik Developer Zone.

  If you have any feedback regarding our APIs or our guides in the Developer Zone feel free to send it to us.

• How to create a widget – Introducing the Piwik Platform

  4 septembre 2014, par Thomas Steur — Development

  This is the next post of our blog series where we introduce the capabilities of the Piwik platform (our previous post was How to create a scheduled task in Piwik). This time you’ll learn how to create a new widget. For this tutorial you will need to have basic knowledge of PHP.

  What is a widget in Piwik ?

  Widgets can be added to your dashboards or exported via a URL to embed it on any page. Most widgets in Piwik represent a report but a widget can display anything. For instance a RSS feed of your corporate news. If you prefer to have most of your business relevant data in one dashboard why not display the number of offline sales, the latest stock price, or other key metrics together with your analytics data ?

  Getting started

  In this series of posts, we assume that you have already set up your development environment. If not, visit the Piwik Developer Zone where you’ll find the tutorial Setting up Piwik.

  To summarize the things you have to do to get setup :

  • Install Piwik (for instance via git).
  • Activate the developer mode : ./console development:enable --full.
  • Generate a plugin : ./console generate:plugin --name="MyWidgetPlugin". There should now be a folder plugins/MyWidgetPlugin.
  • And activate the created plugin under Settings => Plugins.

  Let’s start creating a widget

  We start by using the Piwik Console to create a widget template :

  ./console generate:widget

  The command will ask you to enter the name of the plugin the widget should belong to. I will simply use the above chosen plugin name “MyWidgetPlugin”. It will ask you for a widget category as well. You can select any existing category, for instance “Visitors”, “Live !” or “Actions”, or you can define a new category, for instance your company name. There should now be a file plugins/MyWidgetPlugin/Widgets.php which contains already some examples to get you started easily :

  class Widgets extends \Piwik\Plugin\Widgets
  {
      /**
       * Here you can define the category the widget belongs to. You can reuse any existing widget category or define your own category.
       * @var string
       */
      protected $category = 'ExampleCompany';
   
      /**
       * Here you can add one or multiple widgets. You can add a widget by calling the method "addWidget()" and pass the name of the widget as well as a method name that should be called to render the widget. The method can be defined either directly here in this widget class or in the controller in case you want to reuse the same action for instance in the menu etc.
       */
      protected function init()
      {
          $this->addWidget('Example Widget Name', $method = 'myExampleWidget');
          $this->addWidget('Example Widget 2',    $method = 'myExampleWidget', $params = array('myparam' => 'myvalue'));
      }
   
      /**
       * This method renders a widget as defined in "init()". It's on you how to generate the content of the widget. As long as you return a string everything is fine. You can use for instance a "Piwik\View" to render a twig template. In such a case don't forget to create a twig template (eg. myViewTemplate.twig) in the "templates" directory of your plugin.
       *
       * @return string
       */
      public function myExampleWidget()
      {
          $view = new View('@MyWidgetPlugin/myViewTemplate');
          return $view->render();
      }
  }
  Télécharger

  As you might have noticed in the generated template we put emphasis on adding comments to explain you directly how to continue and where to get more information. Ideally this saves you some time and you don’t even have to search for more information on our developer pages. The category is defined in the property $category and can be changed at any time. Starting from Piwik 2.6.0 the generator will directly create a translation key if necessary to make it easy to translate the category into any language. Translations will be a topic in one of our future posts until then you can explore this feature on our Internationalization guide.

  A simple example

  We can define one or multiple widgets in the init method by calling addWidget($widgetName, $methodName). To do so we define the name of a widget which will be seen by your users as well as the name of the method that shall render the widget.

  protected $category = 'Example Company';
  
  
  
  public function init()
  
  {
  
      // Registers a widget named 'News' under the category 'Example Company'. 
  
      // The method 'myCorporateNews' will be used to render the widget.
  
      $this->addWidget('News', $method = 'myCorporateNews'); 
  
  }
  
  
  
  public function myCorporateNews()
  
  {
  
      return file_get_contents('http://example.com/news');
  
  }

  This example would display the content of the specified URL within the widget as defined in the method myCorporateNews. It’s on you how to generate the content of the widget. Any string returned by this method will be displayed within the widget. You can use for example a View to render a Twig template. For simplification we are fetching the content from another site. A more complex version would cache this content for faster performance. Caching and views will be covered in one of our future posts as well.

  

  Did you know ? To make your life as a developer as stress-free as possible the platform checks whether the registered method actually exists and whether the method is public. If not, Piwik will display a notification in the UI and advice you with the next step.

  Checking permissions

  Often you do not want to have the content of a widget visible to everyone. You can check for permissions by using one of our many convenient methods which all start with \Piwik\Piwik::checkUser*. Just to introduce some of them :

  // Make sure the current user has super user access
  
  \Piwik\Piwik::checkUserHasSuperUserAccess(); 
  
  
  
  // Make sure the current user is logged in and not anonymous
  
  \Piwik\Piwik::checkUserIsNotAnonymous(); 

  And here is an example how you can use it within your widget :

  public function myCorporateNews()
  
  {
  
      // Make sure there is an idSite URL parameter
  
      $idSite = Common::getRequestVar('idSite', null, 'int');
  
  
  
      // Make sure the user has at least view access for the specified site. This is useful if you want to display data that is related to the specified site.
  
      Piwik::checkUserHasViewAccess($idSite); 
  
  
  
      $siteUrl = \Piwik\Site::getMainUrlFor($idSite);
  
  
  
      return file_get_contents($siteUrl . '/news');
  
  }

  In case any condition is not met an exception will be thrown and an error message will be presented to the user explaining that he does not have enough permissions. You’ll find the documentation for those methods in the Piwik class reference.

  How to test a widget

  After you have created your widgets you are surely wondering how to test it. First, you should write a unit or integration test which we will cover in one of our future blog posts. Just one hint : You can use the command ./console generate:test to create a test. To manually test a widget you can add a widget to a dashboard or export it.

  Publishing your Plugin on the Marketplace

  In case you want to share your widgets with other Piwik users you can do this by pushing your plugin to a public GitHub repository and creating a tag. Easy as that. Read more about how to distribute a plugin.

  Advanced features

  Isn’t it easy to create a widget ? We never even created a file ! Of course, based on our API design principle “The complexity of our API should never exceed the complexity of your use case.” you can accomplish more if you want : You can clarify parameters that will be passed to your widget, you can create a method in the Controller instead of the Widget class to make the same method also reusable for adding it to the menu, you can assign different categories to different widgets, you can remove any widgets that were added by the Piwik core or other plugins and more.

  Would you like to know more about widgets ? Go to our Widgets class reference in the Piwik Developer Zone.

  If you have any feedback regarding our APIs or our guides in the Developer Zone feel free to send it to us.