Parse.ly data privacy overview

By default, the Parse.ly tracking code collects certain standard information about a reader including the information noted below.

• ip_address: IP address of the user; used for bot detection and geographic segments
• user_agent: Identifier for the user’s device; used for device analytics (mobile vs desktop)
• first_party_uuid: Site-specific identifier (UUID) for user; used in loyalty analytics (new vs returning)

Customers may choose to selectively disable the tracking of ip_address to offer greater privacy for site visitors. An example implementation is here.

Parse.ly can also be configured so as to disable the tracking of ip_address on a per-visitor basis when using our standard javascript tracker.

What does disabling ip address tracking mean?

When you disable ip_address tracking for a specific site, Site ID, or visitor, we perform a hashing algorithm on the original ip address before storing it in our system and thus we do not store the full IP address.  We do store enough information from the IP address to perform approximate geographic segmentation as part of our services.

Effect of disabling ip_address

Disabling ip_address prevents bot detection and blocking actions Parse.ly may take, but may also provide greater privacy for site visitors.

Disabling ip_address may make our geographic segmentation feature slightly less accurate. Geographic segmentation is most often used with our audience segmentation feature.

To disable ip_address, contact us at support@parsely.com.

How and where is visitor data securely stored?

Parse.ly uses a stateless distributed DNS and CDN infrastructure, which is spread across several geographic regions for redundancy and performance.

Data is immediately processed in a distributed infrastructure located in several data centers in the United States (located in the states of Virginia and Oregon), where it is archived and stored long-term.

All data is stored on secure Linux servers, which are regularly patched and upgraded. These servers are behind a virtual private cloud networking setup. We rely on public cloud infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in place of our own data centers. AWS handles  physical security for that infrastructure.  AWS provides the following  public documentation on cloud security and its infrastructure is ISO 27001 compliant.

Data is also backed up to a cloud distributed data store with 99.999999999% durability, and is only accessible by authorized systems using secure keys. This distributed data store is spread across several data centers clustered geographically in the states of Virginia and Ohio in the United States.

Do you have a public privacy policy?

Yes. Parse.ly publishes its privacy policy here.

How is data aggregated and anonymized?

Parse.ly aggregates and anonymizes customer data for the purpose of studying web-wide attention data. For example, aggregated and anonymized data is used for our data studies which are published to inform media industry trends for customers and the press.

How does Parse.ly handle EU-US Privacy Shield?

Yes. The Parse.ly service is covered under Automattic’s certification. Automattic owns Parse.ly.

Example implementation of disabling ip address tracking per visitor

To disable ip address tracking on a per visitor basis you should define a PARSELY object with an onload function prior to the code for the default implementation. The onload function should call PARSELY.setConfigOptions and pass it an object with the keys and values you’d like to overwrite for this visitor. Currently, the only valid key is track_ip_addresses. The only valid values are true or false.

Use of the setConfigOptions function requires autotrack: false per the dynamic tracking documentation.

<script type="application/javascript">
function shouldTrackAddress () {
  // returns true if we should track IP Address for this visitor
};

window.PARSELY = window.PARSELY || {
  autotrack: false,
  onload: function () {
    PARSELY.setConfigOptions({
      track_ip_addresses: shouldTrackAddress()
    });
    PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({
      url: location.href,
      urlref: document.referrer,
      js: 1
    });
  }
};
</script>
<!-- Normal Parse.ly integration code goes here -->