Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control
How Privatus handles Global Privacy Control (honored by default) and Do Not Track signals, including server-side events and the effect on your numbers.
The tracker reports two browser signals with every hit:
- Global Privacy Control (
navigator.globalPrivacyControl): a signal recognized by several US state laws (California, Colorado, Connecticut and others) as an opt-out of sale and sharing. - Do Not Track (
navigator.doNotTrack): an older signal with no legal force in most places.
What happens is a site setting (Site settings → Privacy):
| Signal | Default | When honoured |
|---|---|---|
| GPC | Honoured | Hits with GPC are dropped before processing and not counted |
| DNT | Not honoured | Turn it on to drop hits with DNT as well |
Privatus analytics isn't a "sale" or "sharing" of personal information, so honoring GPC isn't strictly required. We do it by default as good faith. Turn it off if you have a documented reason to count those visitors.
Dropped hits don't count toward usage and don't appear anywhere, so dashboards undercount slightly (usually a few percent) when these settings are on.
Server-side events can carry the signals as dnt and gpc fields. They're
honored the same way.