A new version of the Privacy Policy for our RDM (Research Data Management) services will come into effect on July 9th 2025. We'd like to inform you about the key change.
What’s Changing?
We are adding a section to our Privacy Policy regarding the use of Matomo, an open-source tool for privacy-friendly web analytics. You can find the exact wording of the new section here.
The adoption of Matomo marks the first step in phasing out Google Analytics. For a transitional period of a few months, both tools will run in parallel to ensure data consistency. After that, Google Analytics will be fully decommissioned. You can find the exact wording of the new Privacy Policy section at the end of this post.
What Are the Benefits?
Matomo is hosted on our own servers , thus ensuring:
- Better privacy: No data transfers to third countries such as the U.S.
- More control: You can opt out of tracking at any time.
- More transparency: All data stays with us and is used solely to improve our services.
Why Do We Analyze Usage at All?
As a non-profit organization, we operate several services related to Research Data Management (RDM). Even though we apply modern development practices and test extensively, unexpected issues can still arise.
Web analytics help us to:
- Detect technical problems early,
- Improve usability, and
- Deliver more relevant content and functionality
In addition, our funding agencies require us to report usage metrics in the form of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – such as the number of visitors. Web analytics enables us to meet these reporting obligations in a reliable and transparent way.