What about Google Analytics, Matomo/Piwki, Facebook,  Twitter plugins

Often one reads in the data protection declarations, the page uses e.g. Facebook Plugins. What is such a plugin - and how do I find out if it is used?

In these cases, a plugin is code that is integrated into the website - and then loads data from an external data source, for example Google or Facebook. Without this reload, the display of "121 Facebook users like this post" would not be possible, since the number of Facebook users in this example somehow has to be determined - why the website has to communicate with Facebook and reload the data from there.

Take a look at this sample code for a Facebook plugin here.

A simple link to a URL on Facebook is not a plugin. However, plugins and links are often mixed up, and many webmasters don't know that you/they can download official Facebook, Twitter, etc. logos and integrate them directly into the website as local (internally) saved graphic files and link them accordingly.

Also, the lack of a visible data source for tracking tools such as Matomo/Piwiki does not mean that log files are not evaluated in the background at web server level.

in conclusion

Whether you need to make changes to the website, whether you need to document certain facts, whether you need permission to do so - and so on and so forth... the article cannot make a statement on this, but experience has shown that lawyers and data protectionists ask exactly these questions in order to then draw up a suitable data protection declaration and/or request changes.

With the methods described here I have hopefully enabled you to answer the question mentioned above: "Which cookies are set and which external data sources do I (or my website) use?"

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