Visitor data and Consent signal system (for GDPR)

Contents

The modules GlobalObserver and Visitor can be used to collect, process and observe visitors' general visiting data and activity, which can be considered as giving consent to collect various personal data.

GlobalObserver module is doing the data collecting part - recording various general visiting data, like visitor's IP address, browser, operating system details.
Visitor module can be used to manage the collected data.

General website visiting data (even collecting dynamic IP addresses of visitors, which are changing often) may be interpreted in EU as personal data.
Since 2018 there is General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) about EU visitors, which limits collecting personal data and to protect website managers' legal rights some sort of consent signal registering system is suggested on a website. GlobalObserver module can be considered as such consent signal registering system for websites, which are using Allmice CMS.

This means, that another major functionality of this module is to register "consent signals" of visitors, which can be considered as their agreement to collect such or any kind of data. In addition to general visiting data, this consent signal registering functionality of GlobalObserver module can be used for collecting other sort of personal data too, like names, postal addresses, dates of births, etc.

When GDPR principles got actual in the middle of 2018, then we were observing, how various websites were implementing the principle of notifying visitors about data collection and about asking their consent of collecting data.

We noticed, that there were mostly three types of approaches, which can be described as follows:
1. A closable window with a message is displayed on the website, which has link to the Privacy Policy and notifies, that by using this website the visitor agrees with the Privacy Policy.
2. Same as first, but the message has following meaning: "By continuing to use this website the visitor agrees with the Privacy Policy."
3. A closable window with message and submit button is displayed on the screen, which often hides other content of the website. This message area has link to the Privacy Policy and is asking by clicking the submit button visitor's agreement with the policy. On many websites visitor is not able to use the website properly until he/she clicks the submit button.

Read the explanations about the GlobalObserver configuration values from
[path-to-your-site]/admin/list-config
by selecting there module Global Observer.

Various configuration items, which are determining, how the module will work, will be described in more detail also in the following manuals.