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• Protecting consumer privacy : How to ensure CCPA compliance

  18 août 2023, par Erin — CCPA, Privacy

  The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a state law that enhances privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California. 

  It grants consumers six rights, like the right to know what personal information is being collected about them by businesses and others. 

  CCPA also requires businesses to provide notice of data collection practices. Consumers can choose to opt out of the sale of their data. 

  In this article, we’ll learn more about the scope of CCPA, the penalties for non-compliance and how our web analytics tool, Matomo, can help you create a CCPA-compliant framework.

  What is the CCPA ? 

  CCPA was implemented on January 1, 2020. It ensures that businesses securely handle individuals’ personal information and respect their privacy in the digital ecosystem. 

  

  CCPA addresses the growing concerns over privacy and data protection ; 40% of US consumers share that they’re worried about digital privacy. With the increasing amount of personal information being collected and shared by businesses, there was a need to establish regulations to provide individuals with more control and transparency over their data. 

  CCPA aims to protect consumer privacy rights and promote greater accountability from businesses when handling personal information.

  Scope of CCPA 

  The scope of CCPA includes for-profit businesses that collect personal information from California residents, regardless of where you run the business from.

  It defines three thresholds that determine the inclusion criteria for businesses subject to CCPA regulations. 

  Businesses need to abide by CCPA if they meet any of the three options :

  1. Revenue threshold : Have an annual gross revenue of over $25 million.
  2. Consumer threshold : Businesses that purchase, sell or distribute the personal information of 100,000 or more consumers, households or devices.
  3. Data threshold : Businesses that earn at least half of their revenue annually from selling the personal information of California residents.

  What are the six consumer rights under the CCPA ? 

  Here’s a short description of the six consumer rights. 

  

  1. Right to know : Under this right, you can ask a business to disclose specific personal information they collect about you and the categories of sources of the information. You can also know the purpose of collection and to which third-party the business will disclose this info. This allows consumers to understand what information is being held and how it is used. You can request this info for free twice a year.
  2. Right to delete : Consumers can request the deletion of their personal information. Companies must comply with some exceptions.
  3. Right to opt-out : Consumers can deny the sale of their personal information. Companies must provide a link on their homepage for users to exercise this right. After you choose this, companies can’t sell your data unless you authorise them to do so later.
  4. Right to non-discrimination : Consumers cannot be discriminated against for exercising their CCPA rights. For instance, a company cannot charge different prices, provide a different quality of service or deny services.
  5. Right to correct : Consumers can request to correct inaccurate personal information.

  6. Right to limit use : Consumers can specify how they want the businesses to use their sensitive personal information. This includes social security numbers, financial account details, precise geolocation data or genetic data. Consumers can direct businesses to use this sensitive information only for specific purposes, such as providing the requested services.

  Penalties for CCPA non-compliance 

  52% of organisations have yet to adopt CCPA principles as of 2022. Non-compliance can attract penalties.

  

  Section 1798.155 of the CCPA states that any business that doesn’t comply with CCPA’s terms can face penalties based on the consumer’s private right to action. Consumers can directly take the company to the civil court and don’t need prosecutors’ interventions. 

  Businesses get a chance of 30 days to make amends for their actions. 

  If that’s also not possible, the business may receive a civil penalty of up to $2,500 per violation. Violations can be of any kind, even accidental. An intentional violation can attract a fine of $7,500. 

  Consumers can also initiate private lawsuits to claim damages that range from $100 to $750, or actual damages (whichever is higher), for each occurrence of their unredacted and unencrypted data being breached on a business’s server.

  CCPA vs. GDPR 

  Both CCPA and GDPR aim to enhance individuals’ control over their personal information and provide transparency about how their data is collected, used and shared. The comparison between the CCPA and GDPR is crucial in understanding the regulatory framework of data protection laws.

  Here’s how CCPA and GDPR differ :

  Scope

  • CCPA is for businesses that meet specific criteria and collect personal information from California residents. 
  • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) applies to businesses that process the personal data of citizens and residents of the European Union.

  Definition of personal information

  • CCPA includes personal information broadly, including identifiers such as IP addresses and households. Examples include name, email id, location and browsing history. However, it excludes HIPAA-protected medical data, clinical trial data and other personal information from government records.
  • GDPR covers any personal data relating to an identified or identifiable individual, excluding households. Examples include the phone number, email address and personal identification number. It excludes anonymous and deceased person’s data.

  

  Consent

  • Under the CCPA, consumers can opt out of the sale of their personal information.
  • GDPR states that organisations should obtain explicit consent from individuals for processing their personal data.

  Rights

  • CCPA grants the right to know what personal information is being collected and the right to request deletion of their personal information.
  • GDPR also gives individuals various rights, such as the right to access and rectify their personal data, the right to erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten) and also the right to data portability. 

  Enforcement

  • For CCPA, businesses may have to pay $7,500 for each violation. 
  • GDPR has stricter penalties for non-compliance, with fines of up to 4% of the global annual revenue of a company or €20 million, whichever is higher.

  A 5-step CCPA compliance framework 

  Here’s a simple framework you can follow to ensure compliance with CCPA. Alongside this, we’ll also share how Matomo can help. 

  Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform trusted by organisations like the United Nations, NASA and more. It provides valuable insights into website traffic, visitor behaviour and marketing effectiveness. More than 1 million websites and apps (approximately 1% of the internet !) use our solution, and it’s available in 50+ languages. Below, we’ll share how you can use Matomo to be CCPA compliant.

  1. Assess data

  First, familiarise yourself with the California Consumer Privacy Act and check your eligibility for CCPA compliance. 

  For example, as mentioned earlier, one threshold is : purchases, receives or sells the personal data of 100,000 or more individuals or households. 

  But how do you know if you have crossed 100K ? With Matomo ! 

  Go to last year’s calendar, select visitors, then go to locations and under the “Region” option, check for California. If you’ve crossed 100K visitors, you know you have to become CCPA compliant.

  

  Identify and assess the personal information you collect with Matomo.

  2. Evaluate privacy practices

  Review the current state of your privacy policies and practices. Conduct a thorough assessment of data sharing and third-party agreements. Then, update policies and procedures to align with CCPA requirements.

  For example, you can anonymise IP addresses with Matomo to ensure that user data collected for web analytics purposes cannot be used to trace back to specific individuals.

  

  If you have a consent management solution to honour user requests for data privacy, you can also integrate Matomo with it. 

  3. Communicate 

  Inform consumers about their CCPA rights and how you handle their data.

  Establish procedures for handling consumer requests and obtaining consent. For example, you can add an opt-out form on your website with Matomo. Or you can also use Matomo to disable cookies from your website.

  

  Documenting your compliance efforts, including consumer requests and how you responded to them, is a good idea. Finally, educate staff on CCPA compliance and their responsibilities to work collaboratively.

  4. Review vendor contracts

  Assessing vendor contracts allows you to determine if they include necessary data processing agreements. You can also identify if vendors are sharing personal information with third parties, which could pose a compliance risk. Verify if vendors have adequate security measures in place to protect the personal data they handle.

  That’s why you can review and update agreements to include provisions for data protection, privacy and CCPA requirements.

  Establish procedures to monitor and review vendor compliance with CCPA regularly. This may include conducting audits, requesting certifications and implementing controls to mitigate risks associated with vendors handling personal data.

  5. Engage legal counsel

  Consider consulting with legal counsel to ensure complete understanding and compliance with CCPA regulations.

  Finally, stay updated on any changes or developments related to CCPA and adjust your compliance efforts accordingly.

  Matomo and CCPA compliance 

  There’s an increasing emphasis on privacy regulations like CCPA. Matomo offers a robust solution that allows businesses to be CCPA-compliant without sacrificing the ability to track and analyse crucial data.

  You can gain in-depth insights into user behaviour and website performance — all while prioritising data protection and privacy. 

  Request a demo or sign up for a free 21-day trial to get started with our powerful CCPA-compliant web analytics platform — no credit card required. 

  Disclaimer

  We are not lawyers and don’t claim to be. The information provided here is to help give an introduction to CCPA. We encourage every business and website to take data privacy seriously and discuss these issues with your lawyer if you have any concerns.

• What is White Label Analytics ? Everything You Need to Know

  6 février 2024, par Erin

  Reports are a core part of a marketing agency’s offering. It’s how you build trust with clients by highlighting your efforts and demonstrating your results. 

  But all too often, those reports deliver a jarring and incohesive experience. The culprit ? The logos, colours and names of third-party brands your agency uses to deliver work and create the reports. 

  Luckily, there’s a way to make sure your reports elevate your agency’s stature ; not undermine it. 

  By white labelling your tools, you can deliver a clear and cohesive brand experience — one that strengthens the client relationship rather than diminishing it. 

  In this article, we explain what white label analytics tools are, why it’s important to white label your analytics solution and how you can do it using Matomo. 

  What is white label analytics ?

  White labelling is the process of redesigning a product or service using your company’s brand. The term comes from the act of putting a white label on a product that covers the original branding and allows the reseller to personalise the product.

  White label analytics, then, is a way to customise your analytics software with your agency’s logo and colours. When you white label your analytics, you ensure your reports, dashboards and interface provide a consistent and familiar user experience.

  

  The alternative is to provide your clients with an analytics report containing the logo and branding of your analytics software provider — whether that’s Google Analytics, Matomo, or another tool. 

  For some clients, it can create a confusing experience that takes attention away from your agency’s results.

  Why white label analytics is important

  There are plenty of reasons to white label your analytics tool, from improving your client’s experience to generating additional revenue. Here are four of the most important benefits to know :

  

  Improve the client experience

  You want your clients to have a seamless user experience with your agency’s brand, whether they visit your website, log into their client portal, or read one of your reports. 

  By white labelling your analytics platform, you can give your clients a visually appealing experience that stays in line with the rest of your branding and doesn’t leave them confused about who they are interacting with or which company is providing the service they pay for. 

  This is especially important if your agency uses other third-party tools like a client portal or productivity platform that also allows for custom branding. 

  Strengthen client relationships

  When you use white labelling to remove solution providers’ logos, you ensure your brand gets all of the credit for the hard work you’ve been doing. This can strengthen the agency-client relationship and reaffirm the importance of your agency. 

  But, white labelling allows you to tell a better story through your reports and increases the perceived value you offer. There are no other brands, logos, or names to confuse the narrative or detract from your key points — or to stop the client from understanding just how much value you provide. 

  Save time and increase productivity 

  White labelling your analytics platform can save your team a significant amount of time when creating client reports. 

  There’s no need to carefully screenshot graphs to add them to your own branded report. You can simply email clients a report using your white labelled analytics platform, assuring them of a seamlessly branded experience.

  The upshot is that your team can spend more time on billable work, improving the value they deliver to existing clients or opening up capacity to take on even more work. 

  Increase monetisation opportunities

  Whether you are an agency or consultant, white labelling an analytics solution gives you the opportunity to package and sell analytics as part of your own services. This can open up new revenue streams, help you to diversify your income, and reach a wider audience.

  The beauty of a white label offering is that there is no allusion to the company providing the underlying service.

  The most important elements of an analytics platform to white label 

  A white label analytics solution should offer a broad range of customisation options that range from surface-level branding to functional elements like tracking codes. 

  Below we take a look at the top components you should be able to customise with your chosen platform. 

  Logo and Favicon

  The logo is the first thing clients will see when they open up their analytics platform or look at your reports. It should make your services instantly recognisable, which is why it’s so jarring when clients read a report with another company’s brand slapped on every chart. 

  This should be the very first thing you change since it will be on almost every page and report your client views. Don’t stop there, however. If you send clients web-based reports, you’ll also want to change the platform’s favicon — the small logo you see next to your website in a browser. 

  Customising both your logo and favicon is easy with Matomo. 

  Just head to Administration, then General Settings and click Use a custom Logo under Brand settings.

  

  Upload your brand, click Save, and it will automatically populate your brand in place of the Matomo logo across the platform, just like in the image above.

  Brand name

  Most analytics platforms will mention their brand names repeatedly across the site, so it’s important to change these, too.

  Otherwise, you risk clients reading your analytics reports in detail or playing around with your platform’s settings and getting confused when another seemingly unrelated name keeps popping up. 

  Again, this is easily done with Matomo’s White Label plugin. 

  Head to Administration, then General Settings. Scroll to the bottom of the page to find WhiteLabel settings.

  Enter your brand or product name in the first box and click Save. 

  

  Just like your logo, this will replace every instance of Matomo’s brand name with your own.

  Brand colours

  Changing your analytics platform’s colours to match your own is almost as important as swapping out the logo. 

  Failure to do so could mean the charts and graphs you add to your client reports could cause confusion. 

  You can also use Matomo’s WhiteLabel settings to change the platform’s background and font colours. 

  Just enter a new header background and font colour using hexadecimal values.

  

  This change will also apply to automated email reports. 

  Custom tracking

  Tracking requests and links are an overlooked element of analytics when it comes to white labelling. Most people wouldn’t think twice about them, but they are an easy way for someone in the know to identify which platform you are using. 

  With Matomo’s White Label plugin, it’s possible to customise every request Matomo makes to your clients’ websites. 

  If left unbranded, tracking requests contain the following references : matomo.js and matomo.php. 

  By clicking the Whitelabel tracking endpoint box on the WhiteLabel settings page, those references will be replaced with js/tracker.js and js/tracker.php

  You’ll need to update your tracking code to reflect these changes, otherwise, requests will still contain Matomo branding. 

  Try Matomo for Free

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  Links

  Finally, you’ll want to remove any links to any additional content offered by the analytics company. These are usually included to improve the user experience, but they are best removed if you are letting clients access your platform. 

  With Matomo, you can remove all links by clicking the relevant box in WhiteLabel settings. 

  You can also use the Show Marketplace only to Super Users checkbox to limit the visibility of Matomo’s Marketplace to everyone bar Super Users.

  Can you white label Google Analytics ?

  In a word : no. 

  Google Analytics might be the most popular analytics platform, but it comes up short if you want to customise its appearance. 

  This can be a particular problem for agencies that need to stand out from competitors offering the same generic reports. You can add more context, detail and graphs to your analytics reports, of course. But you’ll never be able to create completely custom, brand-cohesive reports using Google Analytics. 

  3 analytics platforms you can white label

  While you can’t white label Google Analytics, there are several web analytics providers that do offer a white labelling service. Here are three of the best :

  Matomo

  As you’ve already seen, Matomo is the ideal web analytics platform if you want to let your own brand shine through. Matomo lets you personalise the entire dashboard and all of your reports. That includes :

  • Adding your brand logo and favicon
  • Changing the font and background colours 
  • Removing third-party links
  • Tracking using custom URLs 
  • Develop your own custom theme

  Matomo offers a 21-day free trial (no credit card required). If you want to get remove the Matomo branding, you need the White Label plugin, which starts at just $179 per year after a free trial.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Clicky

  Clicky is a simple, privacy-focused web analytics platform with a white label offering. Like Matomo, you can add your logo and change the platform’s colours. 

  Clicky offers a seven-day free trial and charges a $99 setup fee, with prices starting from $49 and rising to $399. 

  Plausible 

  Plausible is another privacy-focused Google Analytics alternative that offers white labelling. The difference here is that it’s pretty complex to set up. 

  Rather than customising Plausible’s platform, for instance, you need to embed its dashboard into your own user interface. If you want to create your own custom dashboard, you’ll need to use an API. 

  Plausible offers a 30-day free trial.

  Leverage white label analytics today with Matomo

  Don’t put up with confusing unbranded clients a moment longer. White label your analytics platform so the next time you sit down to share insights with your clients, they’ll only see one brand : yours.

  Matomo makes it quick and easy to customise the look of your analytics platform and all of the reports you generate. If you already use Matomo, try the White Label plugin free for 30 days.

  If not, try Matomo with a free 21-day trial. No credit card required. 

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• Server Move For multimedia.cx

  1er août 2014, par Multimedia Mike — General

  I made a big change to multimedia.cx last week : I moved hosting from a shared web hosting plan that I had been using for 10 years to a dedicated virtual private server (VPS). In short, I now have no one to blame but myself for any server problems I experience from here on out.

  The tipping point occurred a few months ago when my game music search engine kept breaking regardless of what technology I was using. First, I had an admittedly odd C-based CGI solution which broke due to mysterious binary compatibility issues, the sort that are bound to occur when trying to make a Linux binary run on heterogeneous distributions. The second solution was an SQLite-based solution. Like the first solution, this worked great until it didn’t work anymore. Something else mysteriously broke vis-à-vis PHP and SQLite on my server. I started investigating a MySQL-based full text search solution but couldn’t make it work, and decided that I shouldn’t have to either.

  Ironically, just before I finished this entire move operation, I noticed that my SQLite-based FTS solution was working again on the old shared host. I’m not sure when that problem went away. No matter, I had already thrown the switch.

  How Hard Could It Be ?
  We all have thresholds for the type of chores we’re willing to put up with and which we’d rather pay someone else to perform. For the past 10 years, I felt that administering a website’s underlying software is something that I would rather pay someone else to worry about. To be fair, 10 years ago, I don’t think VPSs were a thing, or at least a viable thing in the consumer space, and I wouldn’t have been competent enough to properly administer one. Though I would have been a full-time Linux user for 5 years at that point, I was still the type to build all of my own packages from source (I may have still been running Linux From Scratch 10 years ago) which might not be the most tractable solution for server stability.

  These days, VPSs are a much more affordable option (easily competitive with shared web hosting). I also realized I know exactly how to install and configure all the software that runs the main components of the various multimedia.cx sites, having done it on local setups just to ensure that my automated backups would actually be useful in the event of catastrophe.

  All I needed was the will to do it.

  The Switchover Process
  Here’s the rough plan :

  • Investigate options for both VPS providers and mail hosts– I might be willing to run a web server but NOT a mail server
  • Start plotting several months in advance of my yearly shared hosting renewal date
  • Screw around for several months, playing video games and generally finding reasons to put off the move
  • Panic when realizing there are only a few days left before the yearly renewal comes due

  So that’s the planning phase. BTW, I chose Digital Ocean for VPS and Zoho for email hosting. Here’s the execution phase I did last week :

  • Register with Digital Ocean and set up DNS entries to point to the old shared host for the time being
  • Once the D-O DNS servers respond correctly using a manual ‘dig’ command, use their servers as the authoritative ones for multimedia.cx
  • Create a new Droplet (D-O VPS), install all the right software, move the databases, upload the files ; and exhaustively document each step, gotcha, and pitfall ; treat a VPS as necessarily disposable and have an eye towards iterating the process with a new VPS
  • Use /etc/hosts on a local machine to point DNS to the new server and verify that each site is working correctly
  • After everything looks all right, update the DNS records to point to the new server

  Finally, flip the switch on the MX record by pointing it to the new email provider.

  Improvements and Problems
  Hosting on Digital Ocean is quite amazing so far. Maybe it’s the SSDs. Whatever it is, all the sites are performing far better than on the old shared web host. People who edit the MultimediaWiki report that changes get saved in less than the 10 or so seconds required on the old server.

  Again, all problems are now my problems. A sore spot with the shared web host was general poor performance. The hosting company would sometimes complain that my sites were using too much CPU. I would have loved to try to optimize things. However, the cPanel interface found on many shared hosts don’t give you a great deal of data for debugging performance problems. However, same sites, same software, same load on the VPS is considerably more performant.

  Problem : I’ve already had the MySQL database die due to a spike in usage. I had to manually restart it. I was considering a cron-based solution to check if the server is running and restart it if not. In response to my analysis that my databases are mostly read and not often modified, so db crashes shouldn’t be too disastrous, a friend helpfully reminded me that, “You would not make a good sysadmin with attitudes like ‘an occasional crash is okay’.”

  To this end, I am planning to migrate the database server to a separate VPS. This is a strategy that even Digital Ocean recommends. I’m hoping that the MySQL server isn’t subject to such memory spikes, but I’ll continue to monitor it after I set it up.

  Overall, the server continues to get modest amounts of traffic. I predict it will remain that way unless Dark Shikari resurrects the x264dev blog. The biggest spike that multimedia.cx ever saw was when Steve Jobs linked to this WebM post.

  Dropped Sites
  There are a bunch of subdomains I dropped because I hadn’t done anything with them for years and I doubt anyone will notice they’re gone. One notable section that I decided to drop is the samples.mplayerhq.hu archive. It will live on, but it will be hosted by samples.ffmpeg.org, which had a full mirror anyway. The lower-end VPS instances don’t have the 53 GB necessary.

  Going Forward
  Here’s to another 10 years of multimedia.cx, even if multimedia isn’t as exciting as it was 10 years ago (personal opinion ; I’ll have another post on this later). But at least I can get working on some other projects now that this is done. For the past 4 months or so, whenever I think of doing some other project, I always remembered that this server move took priority over everything else.