Plugin rejected because of presstrends analytics, yet other plugins use it?

Does your plugin violate any of these guidelines regarding informed user consent?

7. No “phoning home” without user’s informed consent. This seemingly simple rule actually covers several different aspects:

No unauthorized collection of user data. For example, sending the admin’s email address back to your own servers without permission of the user is not allowed; but asking the user for an email address and collecting if they choose to submit it is fine. All actions taken in this respect MUST be of the user’s doing, not automatically done by the plugin.

All images and scripts shown should be part of the plugin. These should be loaded locally. If the plugin does require that data is loaded from an external site (such as blocklists) this should be made clear in the plugin’s admin screens or description. The point is that the user must be informed of what information is being sent where.

In general, things like banner or text link advertising should not be anywhere in a plugin, including on its settings screen. Advertising on settings screens is generally ineffective anyway, as ideally users rarely visit these screens, and the advertising is low quality because the advertising systems cannot see the page content to determine good ads. So they’re best just left off entirely. Putting links back to your own site or to your social-network of choice is fine. If the plugin does include advertising from a third party service, then it must default to completely disabled, in order to prevent tracking information from being collected from the user without their consent. This is the method commonly known as “opt-in”.

Note that if you do include what we consider to be “advertising spam”, or attempt to game somebody else’s advertising system, then we will not only remove your plugin, but also report your code to the advertising system’s abuse mechanism as well. We do not react kindly to spam. Don’t try it.

If not then this is a question you should be asking the person who reviewed your plugin.

Thanks Chris for a reply. Yes, I’m very aware of spamming, ads and user content. Presstrends was turned off by default with a message explaining what it is and an option to turn it on. You can see it in this screenshot.
https://awesomescreenshot.com/02614r7qa8

There were no ads or anything else. The email from reviewer said “We do not permit phoning home in plugins, nor analytics collections.”

Maybe I implemented the script incorrectly, but in our testing it was working.

Thanks.

Is the checkbox pre checked like in the screen shot? To comply with the guidelines it would need to be un checked. I’m not a plugin reviewer or approver, you should really send an email to plugins at wordpress dot org to get further clarification.

Thanks Chris, I didn’t realize I could reply to those emails. I did, waiting on reply now. The checkbox is unchecked by default when plugin is installed, and user has to check it and save it for it to work.

Thanks.

Reviewers are people too. Best to have a conversation with them about it.

Also, if the box was checked by default, then I’d kind of agree with the reviewer on this one. The standard is that such things must be “opt-in” and “off-by-default”.

Also, you misspelled “anonymous”. ??

I have had issues with reviewers at microstock sites all the time where they misinterpret a rule. It sounds like the reviewer in question might be misinterpreting the rule and, as otherwise noted, a direct conversion will likely fix the issue.