A website privacy policy is an important legal document that states how a website collects, handles, and processes data pertaining to its customers and visitors. The better the privacy policy disclosures are, the more transparent your website operations will be, which is recognized by search engines and is taken into the account. Without a privacy policy that is transparent about all technologies used, a website is generally down-ranked by major search engines.
When visitor statistics technologies are utilized from well-known SaaS services such as TraceMyIP, it is recommended to include a specific set of information that will help to keep your website compliant with the WWW privacy policy requirements.
The following is a basic template that you can copy and paste anywhere on your website’s privacy policy page.
The software we use to improve website security and usability
Some of the information that TraceMyIP allows web publishers to collect is:
Visitor IP address. Th IP information analysis depends on how the user configures TraceMyIP. If a website is subject to GDPR regulations, the IP format will hide the ending bits of the IP address. However, it is worth noting, that even though an IP address might be visible to a website owner (if configured), it does not identify a visitor identity. It merely allows webmasters to see an anonymous visitor activity which provides additional security measures by allowing webmasters to analyze any back-end abuse and take appropriate measures accordingly.
Date and time. Each website page load is logged and assigned a date and time if later analysis if required.
Browser and OS brand and version. Each pageload is assigned this information to understand a website’s compatibility with specific browsers and to better tailor website usability for the most utilized operating systems and browsers.
Landing and referring page data. When a visitor comes from an external website, referrer information is collected for the web publishers to understand which sources of the traffic are most usable. Landing page data indicates which pages are most popular and referred to from external sources of website visitor traffic.
Visitor recurrence. TraceMyIP places a functional cookie in the visitors’ browsers in order to count new visitors, repeating visitors, and unique visits. The cookies are also used to identify repeat visits but these do not identify an actual person but rather generate machine-level statistics.
Search engines. When the website visits referrer information indicates a search engine referral, identifies the search engine and if possible the keywords used.
Advertising campaign data. If the website utilizes online advertising tools, TraceMyIP can capture some of the advertising information for statistical analysis.
Geographic visitor location data. Each IP address has an assignment of an approximate geographic location. TraceMyIP retrieves this information that can identify an approximate location of a connecting network. The geographical information captured allows website owners to utilize this data to modify their website services to provide more usability to specific geographical regions or to analyze whether their online presence or advertising campaigns perform as expected. The GEO information cannot be used to identify the precise location of website visitors.
More service function and legal information can be obtained by accessing TraceMyIP privacy policy at https://www.tracemyip.org/privacy.htm and terms of service at https://www.tracemyip.org/tos.htm