Privacy & law · Knowledge
How do I offer visitors an analytics opt-out?
An opt-out lets visitors exclude themselves from measurement – Matomo ships a ready-made widget for exactly that, typically embedded in the privacy policy.
Processing based on legitimate interest comes with a right to object – the opt-out is how a site honours it in one click; on top, Matomo can respect the browser's Do-Not-Track signal.
The widget, the DNT switch – and the cookieless nuance
Matomo generates the opt-out under Privacy → Users opt-out: a small snippet (iframe or the newer JavaScript variant) that renders a checkbox – visitors untick it and their browser stops being counted. The natural home is the analytics section of your privacy policy, right where you describe the measurement; the honest wording pattern is one sentence of what is measured, one of what is not (cookieless, masked IPs), and the widget as the exit door. Second lever: under the same privacy settings, Matomo can honour the Do-Not-Track header – visitors who set DNT in their browser are then skipped without ever seeing your page's widget; enabling it costs a sliver of data and buys goodwill and consistency. The cookieless nuance deserves honesty: the classic opt-out remembers the objection in a cookie – in a strictly cookieless setup that memory has nowhere permanent to live, so the widget's effect can end with the browser session and the DNT route becomes the more reliable objection path. Say so in the policy instead of overpromising; a truthful limitation reads better than a broken guarantee. Either way, offering the exit is the point: measurement that visitors can leave is measurement done with a straight back.
Key facts
- Widget: Matomo → Privacy → Users opt-out – snippet for the privacy policy's analytics section.
- Legal logic: legitimate interest ⇒ right to object – the opt-out honours it in one click.
- Second lever: enable Do-Not-Track respect – DNT browsers are skipped automatically.
- Cookieless nuance: the opt-out memory is a cookie – in strict cookieless setups DNT is the steadier path; say so honestly.
- Wording pattern: what is measured · what is not · the exit door – three sentences suffice.