GoatCounter documentation (original) (raw)

The short version is that GoatCounter probably doesn’t require a GDPR consent notice, on the basis that 1) no personally identifiable information is collected, and 2) it is in the legitimate interest of a site’s owner to see how many people are visiting their site. A more detailed rationale is described below.

Identifiable information

The GDPR applies to data which “*could be attributed to a natural person by the use of additional information*”, and does “*not apply to anonymous information, namely information which does not relate to an identified or identifiable natural person or to personal data rendered anonymous in such a manner that the data subject is not or no longer identifiable*”.

With the collected data it’s extremely hard to identify a natural person, even by someone with full access to the database (i.e. me).

It’s prohibitively expensive to retrieve the IP address from the hash. The most unique information being stored right now is the full User-Agent header; which can be fairly unique (depending on your browser, especially some mobile ones send a lot of personal information like firmware version) especially when combined with the country, but even this is very limited.

Other information such as the URL or Referer do not relate to an identified person.

It’s true that certain “additional information” from other parties could reveal more – such as correlating the User-Agent and location – but would be hard, and the retrieved data would be limited (everyone in Indonesia using Firefox is a rather large pool of people). To determine whether a personal is identifiable “*account should be taken of all the means reasonably likely to be used*”, and this doesn’t strike me as reasonably likely.

If a user (i.e. a customer on your site) would contact me for their rights to have insight in their data and/or have it removed, then I would have no way to reliably do so, even if they would provide me with most of their computer’s information. It might be possible if they provide their browsing history, but if you have full access to all their browsing data then what do you need GoatCounter’s data for?

Legitimate interest

A second point is that consent is not the only legitimate basis for processing data; there may also be a legitimate interest: “*The legitimate interests of a controller (..) may provide a legal basis for processing, (..) taking into consideration the reasonable expectations of data subjects based on their relationship with the controller.*”

Insight in how many customers are using your product seems to be a “legitimate interest” to me, as well as a reasonable expectation. A real-world analogy might be a store keeping track of how many people enter through which doors and at which times, perhaps also recording if they arrived by car, bike, or on foot.

The problems start when the store also records your license plate number, or creates an extensive profile based on your physical attributes and then tries to combine that with similar data from other stores. This is essentially what Google Analytics does, but is rather different from GoatCounter.

A similar argument is made for things like logfiles, which often store more or less the same information.

I am not the first to arrive at this conclusion:Fathom did the same.

Conclusion

In conclusion; it should probably be safe to add GoatCounter without a GDPR consent notice; but there are a few things to keep in mind:

  1. The GDPR is fairly new, and lacks case law to clarify what exactly counts as identifiable personal data.
  2. EU Regulations such as the GDPR are interpreted and enforced different across member states.
  3. Other national laws may apply as well.
  4. I am not a lawyer 😅 But the similar Fathom interpretation has been reviewed by one.

Note that nothing is preventing you from adding a consent notice, if you want to be sure. There is an example for it on the “Site Code” page in your dashboard.

Other than that, it’s advised you consult a lawyer if you want detailed legal advice specific to your situation.

Feel free to get in touch if you’ve got any questions or having any problems; a lot of times they can be resolved without too much problems.

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