Privacy & Compliance

Rich Statistics is designed from the ground up to be compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and ePrivacy regulations without requiring a consent banner. This page explains exactly what data is collected, what is not, and how to verify our claims.

Data collected

Data point	Example stored value	How it is derived
Page path	`/blog/my-post/`	URL path only — no domain, no fragment. Query params >40 chars or resembling emails are stripped.
Session UUID	`f47ac10b-58cc-…`	Random UUID generated in `sessionStorage`. Dies when the tab is closed. Used only to deduplicate rapid repeat views within one session.
Referrer domain	`google.com`	Domain only — path and query stripped immediately on the server. `(direct)` if no referrer.
UTM parameters	`utm_source=newsletter`	Standard UTM values from the query string if present.
Browser name & version	`Chrome 120`	Parsed from the User-Agent string server-side. The raw UA string is not stored.
Operating system	`Windows`	Parsed from UA string.
Screen resolution	`1920×1080`	Reported by `screen.width`/`screen.height` in JavaScript.
Scroll depth (Premium)	`72.4%`	Maximum scroll percentage during the session.
Click coordinate (Premium)	`x: 48.2%, y: 31.9%`	Percentage of page width/height at click point. No absolute pixels, no element ID stored unless it is a stable semantic ID.
Timestamp	`2025-01-15 14:32:00`	Server time at ingest.

Data NOT collected

Data point	Why it is not collected
IP address	`REMOTE_ADDR` is never read or passed to any function. Verified by grep audit.
Cookies of any kind	Zero calls to `setcookie()`, `wp_set_auth_cookie()`, or any cookie API. Verified by grep audit.
Canvas or font fingerprint	The JavaScript layer measures browser capabilities via documented APIs only (webdriver flag, screen size, navigator.plugins). It does not render canvas elements or measure font metrics.
Email addresses	URL sanitization strips any query parameter whose value looks like an email address before storage.
Long query parameters	Query parameters longer than 40 characters (e.g., session tokens, JWT fragments) are stripped before storage.
Cross-session identity	Session UUIDs are in `sessionStorage`, not `localStorage` or cookies, so they cannot be used to track a visitor across sessions or devices.

Third-party data sharing

Rich Statistics shares zero data with third parties. All data is stored in your own WordPress database. The plugin makes no outbound HTTP requests except:

Freemius license verification — if you have a Premium license. This sends only: your site URL, WordPress version, PHP version, and license key. No analytics data.
Scheduled email reports — sent to the address you configure, via your own site's server.

GDPR compliance notes

Legal basis: Because no personal data is collected, processing falls under legitimate interest (website operation analytics) and does not require consent in most jurisdictions.
Data subject rights: There is no user ID or persistent identifier, so there is no data tied to a specific person to retrieve, correct, or delete.
Data Protection Officer: Because no personal data is processed, appointment of a DPO solely for analytics is not required under Article 37 GDPR.
Data transfers: All data stays on your server. No international data transfers occur through this plugin.

This page provides technical information, not legal advice. Consult your own legal counsel to confirm compliance obligations in your jurisdiction.

Self-audit commands

Run these on your plugin installation to verify the privacy properties yourself:

# Verify: no IP address is ever read
grep -rn "REMOTE_ADDR\|HTTP_X_FORWARDED" includes/ assets/

# Verify: no cookies are ever set
grep -rn "setcookie\|_COOKIE\|wp_set_auth_cookie" includes/ assets/

# Verify: no external HTTP calls from the tracker
grep -rn "wp_remote_get\|wp_remote_post\|file_get_contents" includes/class-tracker.php

All three commands should return zero matches.

Data deletion

To delete all collected analytics data:

Selective pruning: Use wp rsa prune --days=0 to delete all rows immediately while keeping the plugin active.
Full removal: Enable Delete all data on uninstall in Data Settings and then deactivate and delete the plugin. All four database tables and all rsa_* options will be removed.