Privacy-friendly WordPress analytics

Cookies on visitors

None, and nothing else stored in their browsers

Raw IP addresses

Kept out of the analytics tables

Do Not Track and GPC

Honoured by default, in the browser and on your server

Where the data goes

Your own WordPress database, and nowhere else

What each view sends

The tracker sends the page’s path, the address the visitor came from, and the post ID when there is one. When the reader leaves the page, it sends how many seconds the page was in front of them, and a second script sends how fast the page loaded. Like any request to your site, each one also carries the visitor’s IP address and browser details.

That’s the whole list. The tracker doesn’t read screen size, language, fonts or any other detail of the device.

What Vireo keeps from it

Vireo reduces each view to daily totals before it stores anything for the long term:

• Pages are kept as their path. The query string and anything after # are dropped, so an email address or a token in a link isn’t stored with the page. A few WordPress parameters that name the page itself are kept.
• Referrers are kept as the site’s name, such as google.com, without the rest of the address.
• The browser is kept as its name, operating system and device type, without the full browser string.
• The country is looked up from the IP address. Lookups are cached for 30 days under a keyed hash that can’t be reproduced without your site’s own secret.
• Time on page and bounce rate are kept as daily counts per page, with nothing about a single reader.

What happens to the IP address

The raw IP address is written to a short-lived file while the view is processed, used for the country, and deleted when the view reaches the database, usually within a minute. It never goes into the analytics tables.

To count visitors, Vireo combines the address and browser with a secret that changes every day and keeps only the scrambled result. It deletes each day’s secret after two days, and once it’s gone nobody can work out which address a result came from. How cookieless counting works, and what it can’t tell you.

How long it’s kept

The records that tell visitors apart within a day are deleted after two days. Daily totals are kept for the period under Settings, General, “Data retention”: 90 days to 5 years, or forever. The default is 2 years.

Visitors who opt out

If a visitor’s browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, the tracker sends nothing, and Vireo’s endpoint refuses the view if one arrives anyway. Their visit isn’t recorded anywhere. It’s on by default, with no setting to turn on.

If you use a consent plugin built on the WP Consent API, one filter makes Vireo wait for statistics consent too. Views made before the visitor agrees are held in the page and sent once they do. How to turn it on.

Who sees the numbers

Administrators see the dashboard, and you choose which other roles get read-only access. If you connect an AI assistant, it signs in as a user you pick, sees only what that user can see, and can’t change anything. In the free plugin every report is totals: pages, sources, countries, devices and days, with no list of individual visitors to browse. Vireo Pro’s live view shows each current visitor’s trail of pages and deletes it after 30 minutes.

Questions

Does Vireo send my visitors’ data to RebelCode?

It doesn’t. Visitor data stays in your own WordPress database. The only outside services Vireo contacts are the ones you choose to connect, such as Search Console, and none of them receives visitor data. The full list.

Is Vireo GDPR-compliant?

Vireo is built to collect as little as it can and keep it on your site, but compliance belongs to your site as a whole: what else it runs, what your privacy notice says and where you are. Privacy and GDPR lists everything Vireo stores, for you or your adviser to check.

Do I need to mention Vireo in my privacy policy?

It’s good practice to say you use Vireo Analytics and how it counts visits. Visitors can’t be identified from what it keeps, so there’s no per-person data to export or erase through WordPress’s privacy tools.

Can I let a client see the numbers without giving them admin access?

Yes. Under Settings, General, “Roles with access”, any role can get read-only access to the dashboard. Who can see the numbers.