1# Privacy 2This is a summary of all of the components within Matomo which may affect your privacy in some way. Please keep in mind 3third party Themes, Plugins or Apps may introduce privacy concerns not listed here. 4 5## Privacy for users being tracked by Matomo 6In this section we document how to protect the privacy of visitors who are tracked by your Matomo analytics service. 7 8### Anonymise visitor IP addresses 9By default, Matomo stores the visitor IP address (IPv4 or IPv6 format) in the database for each new visitor. 10If a visitor has a static IP address this means their browsing history can be easily identified across several days and 11even across several websites tracked within the same Matomo server. You can anonymize IP addresses to ensure visitors cannot 12be tracked this way: [How to anonymise IP addresses.](https://matomo.org/docs/privacy/#step-1-automatically-anonymize-visitor-ips) 13 14### Delete old visitors logs 15By default, Matomo stores tracked data forever. To better respect the privacy of your users, it is recommended to regularly 16purge old data. You can configure Matomo to automatically delete log data older than a specified number of months: 17[How to delete old visitors log data.](https://matomo.org/docs/privacy/#step-2-delete-old-visitors-logs) 18 19### Include a tracking Opt-Out feature on your site 20In your website, we recommended providing an easy way for your visitors to “opt-out” of being tracked by Matomo. 21You can use the Opt-Out feature to display a link your website that sets a special browser cookie (`matomo_ignore`) when 22clicked. Visitors that click that link will be ignored by Matomo in the future: 23[How to include a tracking opt-out iframe.](https://matomo.org/docs/privacy/#step-3-include-a-web-analytics-opt-out-feature-on-your-site-using-an-iframe) 24 25### Respect DoNotTrack preference 26Do Not Track is a browser-level technology and policy proposal that lets visitors opt out of tracking by websites they 27do not visit. Visitors can enable this preference in their browser, and then it's up to Matomo to respect it. By default, 28Matomo is configured to ignore visitors that have enabled it: 29[How to check if your Matomo respects DoNotTrack.] (https://matomo.org/docs/privacy/#step-4-respect-donottrack-preference) 30 31### Disable tracking cookies 32A cookie is a collection of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer and accesses each time the visitor 33returns. By default, Matomo uses cookies to aid in tracking visitor behavior. If someone gains access to a visitor's 34computer, they could learn a few things about how the visitor visited your website. For many websites, this isn't a 35problem, but for others where a strong level of privacy is required (like online banking), disabling tracking cookies may 36be a good idea: [How to disable tracking cookies.](https://matomo.org/faq/general/faq_157/) 37 38### Keep your visitors details private 39Any user that has at least `view` access (the default access level) to Matomo can view detailed information for all users 40tracked in Matomo (such as their IP addresses, visitor IDs, details of all past visits and actions, etc.) through features 41provided by the `Live` plugin (such as the Visitor Log and Visitor Profile). As the Matomo administrator, you may decide 42that not all of your users need access to this data. You can deactivate the `Live` plugin to prevent users from viewing 43visitor details in the Administration > Plugins page. 44 45## Privacy for Matomo admins and website owners 46In this section we document how a Matomo administrator can better protect their own privacy. 47 48### Keep your Matomo server URL private 49By default, the Matomo Javascript code on all tracked websites contains the Matomo server URL. In some cases you might 50want to hide this Matomo URL completely while still tracking all websites in your Matomo instance. To hide your Matomo 51server's URL, you can modify the Javascript Tracking code and point it to a proxy piwik.php script instead of your actual 52Matomo server: [How to keep Matomo server URL private.](https://matomo.org/faq/how-to/faq_132/) 53 54### Automatic update check 55From time to time, Matomo uses `api.matomo.org` to check if the current version of Matomo is the latest version of Matomo. 56If an update is available, a notification is displayed allowing you to upgrade Matomo. To disable the update check, 57and stop your instance from sending HTTP requests to `api.matomo.org`, deactivate the "Automatic update" feature by 58setting `enable_auto_update = 0` in your configuration file `config/config.ini.php`. 59 60Learn more about [Privacy in Matomo](https://matomo.org/privacy/). 61