JS tracker should not track anything when the protocol is file:// to avoid tracking personal data by accident #17017

Use case:

Someone downloads a page from your website and stores it locally. Then the user opens it and the user will be tracked and the URL might look like

file:///C:/Users/myname/AppData/Local/...

This way we actually track personal data potentially by accident without knowing.

• We would always exclude page urls with this protocol by default
• There should be a method to opt out of this feature so you can track these requests if needed.
• We create an FAQ to document this behaviour / feature.

As this could be seen as a BC break we need to maybe wait for Matomo 5 for this and/or clearly announce this and warn users of this change.

see https://developer.matomo.org/guides/jstracker-core this would need to be changed in js/piwik.js see how to embed tracking code https://developer.matomo.org/guides/tracking-javascript-guide

This would be a great new privacy feature which be quick to implement 👍