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Comment by XCSme | Hacker News Reader

I have been building a self-hosted analytics platform[0] (note that it's not free or open-source, just partially source-available) that is focused on the ease of self-hosting. It is most similar to Matomo but with a better performance, simpler UI and with features that they only provide in their paid plans.

I used simple technologies (MySQL/PHP) for performance and portability reasons and, compared to other self-hosted alternatives, it provides features that you can only find on expensive SaaS product-analytics platforms (heatmaps,session recordings,ab tests, etc.).

Let me know if you have any questions about UXWizz or self-hosting in general.

[0]: https://www.uxwizz.com/

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Looks like a great tool! Questions: I think you might be based in the Netherlands(?), how does UXWizz conform to European laws of privacy? I see that it tracks IP addresses, is that legal? How does it handle cases where people don't respond or opt out of eu cookie consent?

Thanks!

> Looks like a great tool!

Thanks! I spent over 8 years working on it, I am still improving it :)

There is a page regarding privacy here: https://docs.uxwizz.com/about/personal-data-information

> I see that it tracks IP addresses, is that legal

My specific instance of UXWizz does not track IP addresses (you can disable that in the tracking settings), but only a hash of the IP+User Agent.

As for the privacy laws regarding tracking IP addresses, it's not very clear whether it requires consent or not as the law is ambiguous. The IP itself alone can not be directly considered personally identifiable information (PII) as having an IP address only, can not define which real person is the data associated with. Another thing to consider regarding IP addresses is that by default almost all services/servers/devices have an access log that does store IP addresses in plain text, so even if UXWizz does not store the IP, your OS/server/router/ISP might do.

> where people don't respond or opt out of eu cookie consent

As explained in the documentation above, UXWizz does not use any cross-session persistent storage on the user's system (not cookies nor localStorage). Also, being self-hosted, no data is shared with/sent to 3rd parties.

If you need more detailed answers or want a deeper discussion on this subject you can contact me on Twitter or via the contact form on uxwizz.com.

Thanks for feedback, will contact if I have more info. Again it looks great and seems to be super fast.

> it looks great seems to be super fast

Thanks. I tried to optimize it as much as possible (mostly MySQL optimizations). All the data shown in the dashboard is generated on-the-fly in real-time (no archives/cached results). It's hosted on a cheap VPS in Germany (5EUR/month).

The performance does degrade a bit when your database reaches 20 million+ sessions tracked, but for the average website receiving <100k monthly visits it should be fast.

> As for the privacy laws regarding tracking IP addresses, it's not very clear whether it requires consent or not as the law is ambiguous. The IP itself alone can not be directly considered personally identifiable information (PII) as having an IP address only, can not define which real person is the data associated with.

"PII" has a specific meaning, in American law. Sites with references to it are likely not relevant to you, as you are based in Romania. The GDPR is crystal clear that IP addresses are personal data. There is no ambiguity. Depending on how you derive the hash of the IP and user agent, this could also be an "identifier" that may be personal data.

But! There are six different reasons you can legally process personal data. Consent is only one of them. It is quite likely that a website owner would have a valid legitimate interest basis for having analytics. This does not require consent from the user.

The only caveat to that; is that if the analytics needs a cookie (or local or session storage item) then you must seek consent for the cookie.

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