Hello,
I installed PhpList on one of my own servers a while ago. The software works great but i noticed something in my logs that i did not know about.
PhpList seems to be sending daily mails to phplist-stats@phplist.com with statistics? Why is that? Is this compliant with the GDPR? What is in those mails? (i have to dig further)
How can i stop this statistics mails? I never agreed on sending statistics to phpList!
Yes, you can switch that off.
The stats emails are totally anonymous and do not reveal GDPR data. They just send a few numbers.
Check the config_extended.php file and look for https://resources.phplist.com/system/config/stats_collection_address
Thanks! I checked the extended config and indeed found an option to switch it off (NOSTATSCOLLECTION). I also noticed a config argument to change the mail address for those mails.
I’ve changed my config.php and I’ll have a look at the contents of the mail first. If all is good then i will keep the option enabled.
The data is fed into a world map and shown here:
Unfortunately the map stopped working, as it’s using an old version of Mapbox, and we need to fix that.
That’s the only way the data is being used.
Can you explain how this data is fetched into a world map? The data being sent does not contain any geographical data (except the TLD from mail address itself)?
The email (luckily) does not contain any sensitive data. So it does not seem harmful to send these statistics.
This is the output from one of those mails.
phpList version 3.5.6
phpList url newsletter.example.com
Time taken: 69 days 16 hours 30 mins 02 seconden
entered => 2020-08-12 23:12:09
processed => 87
sendstart => 2020-08-26 23:20:02
sent => 2020-11-04 14:50:04
htmlformatted => 1
sendformat => HTML
template => 5
astext => 0
ashtml => 0
astextandhtml => 39
aspdf => 0
astextandpdf => 0We map it to the worldmap (which works again now) by using GeoIP on the last IP address before it hits our servers. That’s a crude indication of the location, and only gives us the IP of the final server, which generally will be in data centres.
The numbers are what allows us to determine how many emails have been sent with phpList worldwide.
I see. Thanks for the information. I’ll keep the statistics mailing enabled.