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Tracking and privacy

BimBeau Privacy Analytics Tracking and privacy settings screen

Tracking and privacy settings used to configure essential and advanced analytics collection.

Tracking and privacy settings control what BimBeau Privacy Analytics measures, how visits are grouped, how URLs are stored, how long analytics data is kept, which roles are excluded, and whether debug logging is enabled.

Important

BimBeau Privacy Analytics provides technical privacy controls, but it does not replace a consent management platform, cookie banner, privacy policy, or legal review.

Where to find tracking and privacy settings

In the WordPress admin area, open BimBeau Privacy Analytics → Settings → Tracking & privacy.

Essential tracking

Essential tracking is the baseline measurement layer. It is designed for limited audience statistics and core aggregate reports.

The settings interface presents essential stats as the baseline analytics layer in the plugin's tracking model. Essential data includes items such as:

  • page views;
  • visit origin;
  • device type;
  • reliable counting.

Advanced tracking

Advanced tracking adds detailed visit insights when it is enabled and allowed by your consent workflow.

Depending on your plan, configuration, and consent setup, advanced data can include items such as:

  • visit journey;
  • engagement time;
  • display format;
  • interactions;
  • location.

Use Enable advanced stats after consent only when your consent workflow is configured to block or release advanced analytics at the right time.

When advanced stats are enabled, BimBeau Privacy Analytics exposes the advanced tracker as a CMP-targetable script.

Your CMP must block or release the BimBeau Privacy Analytics advanced tracker according to the visitor's relevant consent. BimBeau Privacy Analytics can expose the script, script ID, and WordPress handle used for CMP configuration in the settings interface.

Important

BimBeau Privacy Analytics does not replace your CMP. Your CMP manages the consent banner, stores visitor choices, and controls whether advanced analytics scripts are allowed to run.

Respect DNT / GPC

If Respect DNT / GPC is enabled, BimBeau Privacy Analytics stops measurement when the visitor's browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal.

Use this option when your privacy approach treats those browser signals as opt-out signals for analytics measurement.

Visitor activity window

The Visitor activity window controls how long activity from the same visitor can remain grouped into one temporary visitor row.

Essential tracking can store this first-party technical identifier in the visitor's browser through localStorage or sessionStorage. The identifier is used only to group activity into a bounded visitor row, prevent technical duplicate transport hits, and produce aggregated or anonymized audience statistics. It is not used for advertising, cross-site tracking, or visitor profiling.

The default value is 1800 seconds, or 30 minutes. The settings interface accepts values from 300 to 86400 seconds:

  • shorter windows can split activity into more visitor rows;
  • longer windows can keep more continuous activity in one visitor row.

Expired browser storage entries are removed automatically when the tracker runs or reads the stored state again.

URLs and campaigns

The URLs & campaigns section controls how query parameters are handled in tracked URLs.

Setting What it does
Clean URL query parameters Removes query parameters from tracked URLs
Allowed query parameters Keeps a comma-separated list of allowed query keys for URL tracking and UTM aggregation

Use the allowlist for campaign parameters that should remain available for attribution, such as UTM keys, while removing unnecessary or sensitive query parameters.

New installs include these common marketing attribution keys in the default allowlist:

  • utm_source;
  • utm_medium;
  • utm_campaign;
  • gclid;
  • gbraid;
  • wbraid;
  • msclkid.

Existing installs with a missing or empty allowlist are backfilled once during activation or upgrade checks. If you already configured a non-empty custom allowlist, BimBeau Privacy Analytics preserves it.

Important

Do not put personal data in UTM values or allowed query parameters. These values can be stored for attribution, campaign reporting, and channel classification.

Data retention

The Data retention section lets you set retention periods for raw logs and aggregated analytics data, and choose how often automated cleanup runs.

Retention cleanup permanently removes data older than the selected window. See Data retention for a detailed explanation.

Exclusions by role

The Exclusions section lets you select WordPress roles to exclude from tracking.

Select the roles that represent internal users whose activity should not appear in analytics. Selecting all roles ignores all logged-in users.

Debug mode

The Debug section includes Debug mode.

When enabled, BimBeau Privacy Analytics writes detailed diagnostic logs for troubleshooting tracking events, real-time visitor detection, and REST payloads. Logs can appear in the browser console and in wp-content/debug.log when WordPress debug logging is enabled.

Important

Use debug mode only while troubleshooting. Disable it again when you no longer need diagnostic output.