Regional recording policies
You can set different session recording policies for respondents from within and from outside of the EU. Tick/untick any of these options to determine which personal data is going be recorded in which countries.
In this help, we’ll discuss how to use the Sessions tab to:
- Set regional privacy settings
- Set page privacy
- Set element privacy rules
Set regional privacy settings 
Due to GDPR, there are separate privacy options for visitors from EU and non-EU countries
For visitors located in the EU, recording of IP addresses, forms inputs, identity API, email addresses and numbers is turned off by default
For non-EU visitors, recording of all of the above is turned on by default
Uncheck store IP address / record form inputs / identify users via API / record on-page email addresses / record on-page numeric values to prevent the respective information from being stored.
In compliance with GDPR, if you allow recording any of the above personal information in the EU, the visitor’s consent will be required in order for the relevant data be recorded by Website Testing
Asking for consent
If you decide to collect personal data in the EU, respondents who come from the EU will see this screen before they begin the study. The respondent cannot continue with the study without first agreeing with collection of their personal data.
Set page privacy
- Website Testing records on all pages of your website/web app by default
- Check only record on specified pages and click Define pages to manually set rules for the recorded pages.
- You can set rules for included URLs and excluded URLs. For a page to be recorded it has to be fit at least one of the rules for being included and not fit any of the rules for being excluded
- Click Add to add more rules
- Use the URL validator below to verify whether a page URL will be recorded under the current conditions or not
There are severals ways in which a URL can be matched:
- Simple URL match – ignores the query and hash
- Exact URL match
- URL starts with
- URL ends with
- URL contains
- URL regular expression
Page privacy
By copy and pasting a page URL into included pages, you will limit recording only to that specific page and any other pages that you also add there. Adding a page into excluded pages will make sure that that page will not be recorded. You can test if a page is going to be recorded or not by pasting its URL into the URL match validator.
Set element privacy rules
- Below regional privacy settings, click Advanced rules.
- Here, you can define privacy rules for specific elements on your website by specifying their CSS selector.
- Included elements override regional privacy settings and can allow for information that is generally not recorded (such as form inputs, email addresses or numbers) to be recorded in any element that matches the specified CSS selector.
- Excluded elements can be used to disable recording of specific elements on your website. There are three options for excluding an element. Ignore events displays the element in recordings but disables recording of events such as typing and mouse clicks. Grey Box replaces the element in recordings with and empty grey box. Mask replaces all text within the element with asterisks (*).
- Enter the css selector that should not be recorded (tags, ids, classes and attributes are all valid)
- Write a note to label the element privacy rule with. Write a note that will make it easier to understand the selectors when revisiting them at later date
- Click Add to add the selector as a new element privacy rule
- Rules that prevent recording of payment details, password inputs and hidden inputs are present by default and (reasonably) cannot be disabled.
- Enable Record this element with user consent to only exclude the element until the user has given their consent for recording form inputs.
Advanced privacy options
An excluded element like this will make sure that the element with this CSS selector will only appear in recordings as a grey box, unless the respondent gave their explicit consent with the recording of their personal information.
