We should be well within the EU laws and are COPPA and GDPR compliant. Google Analytics is also EU compliant, and widely used in EU countries.
This popular forum software is also used widely by EU forums, and in fact is FROM the EU.
As asked, our privacy policy and terms are explicitly agreed to upon registration, and we provide the required pop up regarding use and acceptance of cookies. The forum can set a cookie on the members device, so it will remember the login name for future visits, if they wish. (most people do this) If someone requested for their account info to be removed, per EU guidelines, we would gladly comply - even though we are US based and not subject to EU court jurisdiction at this time. It has never been requested, but we would gladly comply.
The visitor's browser also serves up info to all websites with information about the browser type and version. Some browsers may block some of this. The IP address presented to a website is also known, unless they are bouncing off another server or using a VPN. The forum uses that info when someone registers, and checks it against databases of known spammers. Most forums share these databases with each other, to keep the spammers out. (It works very well) If someone has a match of a spammer's username, ip address, or email address, they are not able to register. If we report a spammer, it goes to the database for other forums to benefit. We use 3 of them, such as
www.stopforumspam.com We have no use for the info, once the account passes registration. The forum software also watches the first 6 posts that a new member makes, and will intentionally take the posts off line for manual review by the staff if they contain certain links or text that could be considered spammy in nature. We have a "Approval Queue" that lights up, when such a judgement call needs to be made by the support team. (again, very rare) Regarding COPPA, we don't allow anyone under 18 - so it does not apply.
As far as Google Analytics, we intentionally have a setting enabled to "Anonymize IP addresses for Google Analytics", so we aren't passing direct info along for the statistics.
There are hundreds of attempts per hour for spammers to register on this forum, and those simple tasks keep 99.999999% of them out. I think we have had maybe 2 get through since Feb. If you click members button on top to see the current people online, you'll see a whole bunch of sessions that don't have names. Most of those are current attempts to register and spam, and I think we do a great job to keep them out
We also don't participate in ADSENSE or simular programs to manage our advertising banners, like most forums. (many of those will track people, give pop ups, and show you things based on your previous browsing habits at other sites) Grumble banner advertisers are carefully screened and are industry related. We host all of the banner management software on our OWN server, so we access to the code and know that no evil is happening. The only thing we DO track with those are some basic statistics for the advertiser to see performance. (Total views/impressions, and total clicks). We don't track it down to who saw or clicked, just a running total.
I hope this clarifies any questions,
Mike
