Independent Center for Privacy Protection in Germany says Matomo can be used in compliance with data protection laws

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We are proud to support User Privacy best practises and regularly work on related features and improvements.

Since January this year, we have also been in close contact with the Independent Center for Privacy Protection in Germany, Schleswig-Holstein (ULD). The aim of the collaboration was to implement data protection regulations in the source code so that Matomo (Piwik) can be used in compliance with the new German privacy protection laws.

To achieve this compliance, the ULD has analyzed the source code of Matomo and listed specific areas of improvement, most of which have been incorporated into Matomo 1.2 (see changelog). In addition, the ULD came up with a description and guide, to help the user set up a privacy-compliant configuration of Matomo.

This document can be found here (in German): Instructions for privacy-compliant configuration of Matomo

Some security features in Matomo listed in the document are:

  • AnonymizeIP plugin, which removes the right most numbers in visitor IP addresses
  • Visitor Opt Out widget, which provides an automatic “Web Analytics tracking & cookies Optout” feature on your site
  • Possibility to delete your Matomo logs and ensure limited time access to visitor level logs

Given the heated debate about privacy protection in Web Analytics software, Matomo is becoming a very important player in the Web Analytics landscape in Germany.

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A powerful web analytics platform that gives you and your business 100% data ownership and user privacy protection.

No credit card required.

Free forever.