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Privacy tools to ensure global privacy compliance

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One of FunnelFuel’s guiding principles: respecting privacy #

FunnelFuel Analytics was designed with privacy in mind. It can be configured to follow even the strictest of privacy laws. Our unique B2B/ABM analytics solutions are built around the Matomo endpoints, a best in class open source framework with complete privacy compliance, globally, including GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, LGPD and PECR. Simply by using FunnelFuel you will ensure all of your valuable information is private and that your website respects your visitors’ privacy. If you need to have data stored in a specific country and are looking for additional data sovereignty, you can achieve this with FunnelFuel On-Premise.

When we were choosing a solution to build our ABM analytics into, we choose Matomo, not least because the European Commission made the same choice – showing the robust value that Matomo places on data privacy.

“Europa Analytics is based on Matomo which is the leading open-source analytics platform that provides relevant and reliable insights into user behaviour. The data and information collected by Matomo is 100% owned and controlled by the European Commission. This guarantees compliance with strict privacy regulations and laws. Matomo is used by more than 1,000,000 websites worldwide, including large corporations, SMEs, governments & non-profit organisations.”​

European Commission

FunnelFuel and GDPR #

How FunnelFuel ensures GDPR compliance:

  • Data anonymisation and full GDPR control centre in the UI
  • GDPR Manager
  • Users can opt-out of all tracking
  • People can view the data collected
  • Capabilities to delete visitor data when requested
  • The data is not used for any other purposes (compared to Google Analytics where the data is shared between advertisers and builds the Google graph)
  • IP anonymisation tool – IPs are mapped to Company/organisations and stored, or discarded
  • Visitor log and profiles can be disabled
  • Data is stored in the EU or in any country of your choice

FunnelFuel uses the Matomo tracker, outsourcing GDPR compliance. Matomo has also been approved by the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) as one of the select few web analytics tools that can be used to collect data without tracking consent.

Users are given the following controls;

✔ Right of access
✔ Right to withdraw consent
✔ Supports “Do Not Track”
✔ Right to data portability
✔ Right to object
✔ Delete historical data
✔ Right to erasure
✔ Anonymizing features
✔ Anonymize historical data

Ways FunnelFuel protects the privacy of your users and customers #

Although FunnelFuel Analytics is a web analytics software with a purpose to track user activity on your website, we take privacy very seriously.

The following advanced privacy protections in FunnelFuel provide you with more control:

  • FunnelFuel has an opt-out mechanism which lets users opt-out of web analytics tracking
  • FunnelFuel has a dedicated privacy section in the admin UI, giving our customers a raft of tools to manage their privacy settings.
  • You can configure for data retention of raw data and aggregated reports
  • FunnelFuel does collect full IP addresses but we only store those which are mapped to an organisation, and the data presented to the FunnelFuel analytics user is the organisation name and not the individual user [IP address] within the organisation
  • FunnelFuel is loaded with other data anonymisation techniques which are managed in your admin
  • Respect DoNotTrack setting
  • Configure FunnelFuel to not process any personal data or PII (personally identifiable information)
  • Set shorter expiration dates for tracking cookies
  • Disable Visits Log and Visitor Profile
  • Users aren’t tracked across websites unless specifically enabled (example publishing groups can enable this to get a single visitor view across their owned and operated media but unlike GA, this is not the default.
  • FunnelFuel can be used without needing consent (unlike with Google, which will always need user consent). This strengthens privacy as it means you’re not ‘following’ visitors (e.g. over multiple days) – read below for more information.

FunnelFuel adheres to GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, LGPD and PECR #

Data Protection Authorities across the EU are ruling Google Analytics illegal to use under the GDPR. Starting with the Austrian Data Protection Authority’s ruling on Google Analytics and then the CNIL followed suit with a similar ruling. Finding a GDPR compliant Google Analytics alternative is more important than ever.

FunnelFuel can be configured to automatically anonymise data so you don’t process any personal information.

Make sure you’re not processing any PII (Personally Identifiable Information) with FunnelFuel #

This allows you to be GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, LGPD and PECR compliant, and helps minimise risk of fines.

We cover this topic in depth here: As the legalities of Google Analytics gets called into question again, here is the definitive guide around how NOT to collect PII with FunnelFuel (opens in a new window)

Importance of data privacy #

FunnelFuel takes data privacy extremely seriously, which is why we developed a next generation B2B web analytics platform which is designed to deliver a greater array of privacy controls for our clients.

As we all know privacy is a major concern for anyone who spends a lot of time online. Websites can use tracking tools to collect personally identifiable information (PII) in incorrect ways, which can threaten privacy.

Here are a few examples of how websites can gather your personal information even once you’ve left their site:

Google #

Companies like Google can be a threat to privacy due to the information they gather and what they end up doing with it. Even though they’re providing a free service, there are more privacy sacrifices as your analytics data is tracked, stored and owned by them. This means they have access to data like internet activity logs (websites, pages visited, searches), which reveal a lot of personal info about our life, and work. This data is utilised by Google to enhance their advertising product, meaning it contributes to the Google audience graph. This is the trade off made for their ‘free’ products and services.

When using Google Analytics, Google knows all the IP addresses (and other browser unique identifiers which can be considered personal data) of visitors to your site. Through this they can then track the six other websites that person visited earlier that day, and the 50 websites she/he looked at in the last month. By re-using such visits log data tracked on your website they can enrich existing profiles for given IP addresses.

Google Analytics dominates the industry with a market share of 84%. Coupled with their other products that use tracking beacons, such as Adsense, you can see their immense ability to build an accurate picture of most visitors to websites.

Why is this profiling for marketing purposes considered a “problem” for privacy? #

Platforms like Google are able to build an enormous profile of all websites and pages looked at by most internet users worldwide (even if they’re not Google users). This network affect is a serious part of the problem; their picture is not constrained to singular web visits but instead extends to tracking hours of consecutive website visits.

One of their main goals is to improve the re-marketing of Google Ads to internet users – to sell to people better. But many internet users and website operators are growing concerned about what could be termed a Global Internet User Activity Database and its moral implications. You don’t need to be a Privacy Junkie to be interested in the challenges and moral implications of gathering so much data on the internet.

We choose not to discuss the details here but recommend you check out the Privacy section of the EFF website to learn more. You may also be interested in the article “The High Privacy Cost of a “Free” Website” (themarkup.org) for a more recent in-depth analysis.

Why choose FunnelFuel for privacy? #

When we were developing our B2B insights and analytics framework we audited the market for technology spines which we could build value around, and we chose to use the Matomo framework. Matomo is a large open source technology utilised by the likes of Nasa, and their open frameworks made it easier to rapidly deploy the unique FunnelFuel data, such as our organisation data, contextual data and marketing segments into a dedicated B2B marketing framework.

The Centre for Data Privacy Protection in France (CNIL) lists Matomo as a tool that can easily ensure full compliance of privacy regulations. The CNIL also has approved Matomo as one of a select few web analytics tools that is exempt from tracking consent requirements.

Matomo’s strong privacy leadership is reflected by the many government agencies who already trust and rely on Matomo (in Europe, Asia, North America, Africa). The privacy policies on the below government agencies lists Matomo, showing they also chose this framework to deliver their core analytics experience;

This made them a logical choice for FunnelFuel, a business which puts users privacy front and centre.

A bonus: consent free tracking #

FunnelFuel supports consent free tracking. So you don’t always need to ask your visitors for cookie consent or for tracking consent. This way you not only get more accurate data but also don’t annoy your visitors with cookie consent banners that might damage your brand and results in lost customers and data. This is different to Google Analytics where you always have to ask for consent.

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