Uh oh... I don't like this!

Remember how I said Matomo is great? Well it is, and I still recommend it!

And I loved how Matomo respects the Do-Not-Track header from your browser… but what I don’t like is its implementation.

What’s wrong?

Well, Matomo does not only not track if the Do-Not-Track is set, but it also does not count the visit at all. In fact, it pretends the visit never happened.

Why is that bad?

I believe that it should still count the visits if Do-Not-Track is set, but simply not track the user across visits. Meaning it would at least count that there has been a visit. But it doesn’t do that, which means you’re loosing statistics.

How to solve?

Someone had already opened an issue on GitHub about this two years ago and Matomo (formerly Piwik) did not yet resolve it and it doesn’t look like they will. So for now, although not ideal, I recommend disabling Do-Not-Track recognition.

There are other ways to minimize tracking and make things more private for your visitors. I recommend those. Check out my previous post!

External links