Fullstory

Fullstory is a web analytics service, used to track behavior of website visitors.

6.2/10

How we calculate ratings →

Handling

Does the policy allow personally-targeted or behavioral marketing? No

10/10

Does the service allow you to permanently delete your personal data? No

0/5

Even if there is a reasonable delay before the data is fully deleted (as is common), the data still counts as "permanently deleted" and satisfies the parameters for this question.

Score

Yes, by contacting someone

60%

Yes, using an automated mechanism

100%

N/A

The service doesn't collect any personal information.

100%

Citation

[FullStory Customers] can contact us at any time regarding your right to access, update, edit, correct, request deletion of your Personal Information, as well as making changes to your marketing preferences us by emailing us at privacy@fullstory.com. We will consider any requests in accordance with applicable laws and our potential legitimate interests. If we are unable to accommodate your request, we will let you know why we are unable to do so.

[…]

If you are a User of a Fullstory Customer’s website and you would like to access, updated, edit, correct, or request deletion of your Personal Information, you should direct your inquiry to the FullStory Customer. If you direct your inquiry to us when it should be directed to a FullStory Customer, we will redirect your inquiry to the FullStory Customer.

Notes

Website users of a FullStory customer are unable to directly request FullStory to delete personal data.

Does the service allow third-party access to private personal data? Yes, all parties specified (only to critical service providers)

8/10

This may come in the form of outright data sharing or by using local third-party analytics software (such as Google Analytics, which collects a plethora of user information).

Note that whether the policy allows sharing aggregated user data does not affect this question.

If the personal data is encrypted when it passes through the third-party, it does not count as third-party access (as the data is inaccessible to that party).

If personal data has been made public by, for example, posting it to a blog, it does not count as private personal information (and is therefore not considered by this question).

Score

Yes

The policy allows sharing personal data with third parties (not just critical service providers), and does not explicitly list the third parties.

Yes, all parties specified (including non-critical service providers such as advertisers)

30%

Yes, not all parties specified (but only to critical service providers)

70%

Yes, all parties specified (only to critical service providers)

80%

100%

Citation

We will never sell your data to third parties or otherwise share it with non-agent third parties. If this practice should change in the future we will update this policy to identify those parties and illustrate how individuals can exercise their right to opt out of such usage. However, in the course of business, we may hire third party individuals and organizations to help us make the FullStory Services better. These third parties include our web host provider, SaaS providers such as email hosting services, payment processors, or outside contractors we hire to perform marketing, maintenance, or assist us in securing our website. We may also hire third parties to operate, maintain, repair, or otherwise improve or preserve our website or its underlying files or systems.

[…]

We disclose your Personal Information for a business purpose to the following categories of third parties:

Service providers and other third parties we use to support our business, including without limitation those performing core services (such as billing, credit card processing, customer support services, customer relationship management, accounting, auditing, surveys, advertising and marketing, analytics, email and mailing services, data storage, and security) related to the operation of our business and/or the Services, and making certain functionalities available to our users

Notes

FullStory customers can access the browsing behavior of their website users.

The term “agent” refers to someone authorized by a FullStory customer to access the customer’s personal information.

When does the policy allow law enforcement access to personal data? When reasonably requested

3/5

Score

Always

This includes cases in which law enforcement either runs the service or has a known backdoor into (or relationship with) the service.

Not specified

When reasonably requested

60%

Only when required by a court order or subpoena

80%

N/A (no personal data to share)

The service would have no personal data to share with law enforcement.

100%

Never (special legal jurisdiction)

The service operates in a jurisdiction in which sharing data with law enforcement is never required.

100%

Citation

We may access or release Personal Information about you when required to do so in order to comply with any applicable, laws, regulations, subpoenas, or enforceable governmental or public authority requests, including, to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

[…]

The Privacy Shield Frameworks require us to inform EU and Swiss individuals that we may be required to release their data in response to lawful requests by public authorities including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

[…]

We attempt to notify Users about legal demands for their personal data when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency. We may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague or lack proper authority, but we do not promise to challenge every demand.

Transparency

Does the policy outline the service's general security practices? Somewhat

1/3

Score

Somewhat

The policy provides only a very vague overview of its security practices.

30%

Yes

60%

Yes, including audits

"Reviews," "monitoring," etc. also count as audits.

80%

Yes, including independent audits

Independent "reviews," "monitoring," etc. also count as independent audits.

100%

N/A

The service doesn't collect any personal information.

100%

Citation

We take measures to enhance the security of our site and the FullStory service. These measures include maintaining a robust information security program, instituting security controls within the FullStory Services such as TLS certificates and strong authentication options, and giving our Customers facilities to exercise good security practices. As a FullStory Customer, it is important for you to protect against unauthorized access to your password and to your computer. No security measures are perfect and we cannot promise to be able to withstand security threats in all circumstances.

Is the policy's history made available? Only the date it was last modified

3/5

Does the policy require users to be notified in case of a data breach? Not necessarily

0/7

Will affected users be notified when the policy is meaningfully changed? Yes

5/5

Collection

Does the service collect personal data from third parties? Yes, but for critical data only

7/10

Is it clear why the service collects the personal data that it does? Yes

10/10

Score

Somewhat

30%

Mostly

70%

Yes

100%

N/A

The service doesn't collect any personal information.

100%

Citation

In this regard, we use a separate instance of the FullStory Services to monitor the instance of FullStory Services that our customers use. This includes using first-party cookies to maintain a coherent scope for a customer user session across the customer-facing FullStory Services. In addition, the customer-facing FullStory Services may use third-party cookies to aid in payment processing.

If you are a Customer of FullStory, when you signed up for the Services, you entered into an agreement with FullStory to accept FullStory’s terms of use for the Services, which includes the obligations in this Privacy Policy and our Acceptable Use Policy (the “Agreement”). As part of your use of the Services, we collect the same information as that of a Visitor (see above) through your interaction with the Site, and we may ask you for additional information, such as payment information, Usage Data in relation to the Services, and other information we deem relevant for the purpose of providing the Services.

FullStory may use Customers’ Personal Information as agreed to in the Agreement and:

To complete transactions between you and FullStory,
To send e-mail, chat, or in-app messaging about the Site or respond to inquiries,
To provide support for the FullStory Services,
To enhance or improve user experience, the Site, or FullStory Services,
In a support context, to view details of your account and ensure that it complies with your contractual obligations to us,
To perform any other function that we believe in good faith is necessary to protect the security or proper functioning of the FullStory website or the FullStory Services,
We may post your testimonials along with those of other satisfied customers on our Site, in addition to other endorsements.

[…]

FullStory Services use first-party cookies and local storage to maintain a coherent scope for a user session across multiple pages on a single website.

FullStory Services do not and will not ever attempt to identify the same person across disparate, unrelated domains. FullStory takes pains in its engineering choices to differentiate itself from ad-tracking software. It is a violation of our Acceptable Use Policy for our customers to attempt to build multi-site user profiles for the intent of selling or exchanging lists of users or demographic information.

Does the service allow the user to control whether personal data is collected or used for non-critical purposes? On an opt-out basis, for all non-critical data/uses

6/10

Some services allow users to opt-out or opt-in to of non-critical collection or use of personal data, such as collecting data for personalized advertisements.

Score

On an opt-out basis, but only for some non-critical data/uses

30%

On an opt-out basis, for all non-critical data/uses

60%

On an opt-in basis

60%

N/A (no data used for non-critical purposes)

100%

Citation

If you wish to prevent all websites using the FullStory Services to be able to record activity, you can opt-out of the FullStory Services. Opting out will create a cookie that tells FullStory to turn off recording on any site which uses the FullStory Services. The presence of this cookie is required to continue opting out. That means if you clear your browser cookies, you will have to opt-out again. Unfortunately, this is the most permanent and least intrusive solution FullStory can offer because of how browser technology works. You may wish to employ a third party browser extension to block scripts like FullStory instead of using our Opt Out cookie, but know that using any third party extension may pose additional risk.

If you are considering opting-out, it's probably a good time to make sure you really understand that the purpose of the FullStory Services is to help well-intentioned companies make their website better for you. It is emphatically not one of those we-track-you-around-the-web kind of deals. We think that's creepy, too.

Most people who make websites are just like you: nice people who want to do a good job and make something awesome. And you wouldn't believe how much time and energy product teams spend trying to make their websites great for you. Without the FullStory Services, though, they simply do not have enough information to understand when they get it wrong. If they can see how you actually experience their website, like an ongoing usability study, they'll actually know what to improve! They don't need to record anything sensitive in order to do that, and we have a strict Acceptable Use Policy where you can see for yourself the high standards we expect of FullStory customers with respect to your privacy.

Does the policy list the personal data it collects? Only summarily

3/10

Score

The policy does not claim to not collect personal data, but it also doesn't provide any meaningful insight into the types of personal data it collects.

Only summarily

The policy uses overly vague language to provide a summary of the types of collected personal data.

30%

Yes, generally

All general categories of collected personal data are listed, though not all types of personal data are explicitly mentioned (for example, the list might use a phrase like 'such as' when listing types of personal data).

70%

Yes, exhaustively

All types of collected personal data are listed specifically

100%

N/A (no personal data is collected)

100%

Citation

FullStory collects information that may be personally identifiable, such as IP addresses. Also, you may choose to interact with the Site in a way that results in your providing Personal Information to FullStory, such as giving us your name, email address, and user name when signing up for a free trial of the Services or creating an account to license the Services or to post comments to the FullStory blog or social media sites, etc. Any information you provide in the FullStory blog or social media areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them.

Any Personal Information provided by you as a Visitor to the Site will be used only as described in this Privacy Policy and in FullStory’s Acceptable Use Policy located at https://www.fullstory.com/legal/acceptable-use/.

[…]

We use FullStory on FullStory. In this regard, we use a separate instance of the FullStory Services to monitor the instance of FullStory Services that our customers use. This includes using first-party cookies to maintain a coherent scope for a customer user session across the customer-facing FullStory Services. In addition, the customer-facing FullStory Services may use third-party cookies to aid in payment processing.

[…]

FullStory collects information on a User under the direction of its Customer, and has no direct relationship with the User whose information it processes. It is important to understand that when a User visits other websites that use the FullStory Services, the FullStory Customer’s privacy policy applies to that information collected instead of this Privacy Policy.

Last Updated

June 24, 2020

Sources

Source #1 ↗

Contributors

4Iufy