Options missing in the ComplianZ statistics configuration panel

Hi @tschwarz-1,

With cookieless enabled in Matomo you will still get the statistics category for the following reason:

On page load, cookieless tracking from Matomo starts based on parameters, which includes a basic pageview. After consent on statistics, Matomo will add a cookie for more precise and detailed data.

This is why you have the category enabled. This is based on Matomo’s *_CookieConsentGiven events.

If you’re fine with just cookieless tracking you can disable the statistics category under cookie banner settings.

I will have a look at the article, as this might not be explained (properly).

Hope this helps,

regards Aert

Hi @aahulsebos, and thanks for your reply!

Maybe I don’t understand what I had been asking, but my question was regarding the available options on the ComplianZ wizard’s statistics screen. In my installations, even in a fresh and empty installation there is no option “yes, anonymous” on the ComplianZ statistics configuration screen under

Do you compile statistics of this website?

Available options are:

Yes, and Google Tag Manager fires this script
Yes, and Matomo Tag Manager fires this script
Yes, with Google Analytics
Yes, with Matomo
Yes, with Clicky
Yes, with Yandex
Yes, but not with any of the above services
No

At the same time, the short explanation on that configuration page links to this document – https://complianz.io/statistics-implementation – in which an option “yes, anonymous” is shown on a a screenshot of a configuration page (https://complianz.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/statistics-1030×481.jpg) and explained in detail.

A recent article I found on your website – https://complianz.io/display-the-statistics-category-as-always-active/ – states that

If your Complianz configuration indicates that your site only collects anonymized statistics …, this will result in a ‘pre-checked’ toggle/slider next to the Statistics category in your Cookie Banner.

So it seems that this is still possible but “yes, anonymous” is not shown as an option for statistics in the configuration panel.

I understand that I can completely disable the statistics category in the banner, or set the statistics options to ‘no’. But I would prefer to declare the statistical collection on the banner in the way explained in the quote above.

It seems to me that anonymized cookieless tracking via Matomo does not require consent and could thus benefit from the “pre-checked” toggle/slider (and get a different explanatory text), so I’m wondering if this is something that could be achieved differently or something that is no longer possible within ComplianZ.

But maybe I am not understanding something correctly.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by t.schwarz.

@tschwarz-1 these articles need to be updated. The ‘yes, anonymous’ option has been dropped (as you can do the same with ‘not with any of the above’).

Because of the way Matomo works it is currently not possible to make it privacy friendly out of the box (even with cookieless tracking, as Aert explained), which is why the option ‘do you want to ask consent for statistics’ does not appear anymore in this situation.

Alternatively, you can bypass this by selecting ‘not with any of the above’, and configure the script in the script center.

Or you can use Burst Statistics, which is privacy friendly by design.

Okay, thanks a lot for the explanation about the options!

Alternatively, you can bypass this by selecting ‘not with any of the above’, and configure the script in the script center.

So, based on this – https://complianz.io/statistics-implementation#configuration – would it be sufficient to add

data-category=”functional”

to Matomo JS snippet and have it included in the script manager to get a statistics category that is preselected/always active in the banner (like: https://complianz.io/display-the-statistics-category-as-always-active/ )?

Or would the statistics category then not appear at all because the script is designated as “functional” and thus subsumed under that category?

In the latter case, I could indeed just switch the category in the banner off.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by t.schwarz.

Hi @tschwarz-1,

<script data-category="functional"></script>should be set outside of the script center, the script center will set everything to a minimum of ‘statistics’. For example in your header.php etc.

This will not result in the “always active” banner, but you can follow the article to do so.

The statistics category will still exist, as Matomo, by default, is not privacy friendly, but in combination with local hosting (with the plugin) and settings explained on our website (https://complianz.io/cookieless-tracking-matomo/), it can be set up privacy friendly.

Therefore the quickest way would be just disabling the category and leaving cookieless as the only tracking option.

regards Aert

Thanks @aahulsebos,

I think I understand now, and suppose that’s what I’ll do – disable the category.

So, understanding that it won’t work for Matomo because of its default setup, just for my understanding, I’ll ask: following the “always-active-article”,

If your Complianz configuration indicates that your site only collects anonymized statistics

I can achieve the ‘always active’ toggle state by overriding the default code.

How would one then have to configure the current statistics settings in a way that ComplianZ would conclude that the site only collects anonymized statistics and offers the pre-checked toggle?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by t.schwarz.

Hi @tschwarz-1,

I’m not sure what you mean by; How would one then have to configure the current statistics settings in a way that ComplianZ would conclude that the site only collects anonymized statistics and offers the pre-checked toggle?

With the always active change, there won’t be a (working) toggle. Nothing changes for the statistics configuration. If you want Matomo to add the cookie without consent, you can just whitelist Matomo in the script center and everything will be fired prior consent.

regards Aert

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Aert Hulsebos.

Hi again!

thanks for your reply! I’m getting the impression I’m not explaining myself properly… sorry for that.

What I would (ideally) like to (be able to) do is this:

Matomo in the no-cookie-setup still has an opt-out option/toggle that goes into the privacy statement by default. As it’s a no-cookie-implementtion, consent is not legally required, so offering the opt-out mechanism is optional, but we still offer it. I’d like to use the ComplianZ banner statistics toggle to mirror this setup, that is, have a statistics toggle that is set to ‘consent’ by default, or “pre-checked”, but that can still be turned off.

Basically, the setup that is described in the “always active article” as default:

If your Complianz configuration indicates that your site only collects anonymized statistics (and that collecting anonymized statistics is allowed prior to consent in your selected targeting regions), this will result in a ‘pre-checked’ toggle/slider next to the Statistics category in your Cookie Banner.

.

So my question is: similar to the change for the ‘always active’ toggle, is there a way to/how can I set up the ComplianZ statistics section in a way that leads ComplianZ to conclude that the site only collects anonymized statistics (using ‘none-of-the-above’ as it won’t work with the Matomo options) and hence offer the ‘pre-checked’ statistics toggle/slider for the statistics section in the banner?

Thanks!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by t.schwarz.

Hi @tschwarz-1,

I understand the question. There’s no functionality in Complianz to pre-check services that can be revoked as well. If it’s pre-checked, it means prior consent is not needed, and revoke is not possible and vice versa. Consent and revoking consent are connected.

A possibility might be to introduce this logic with your own category especially for Matomo for example;

https://github.com/Really-Simple-Plugins/complianz-integrations/blob/master/social-media-category.php

https://complianz.io/add-social-media-as-a-category/

This should work, but I never used the above for this purpose.

regards Aert

Thanks @aahulsebos, I will give this a try and report back =)