IP address logging and GDPR

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  •   21/10/2021 09:49
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Under the General Data Protection Regulations there are new definitions of what constitutes "personal information" - one such new definition particularly applicable to web hosting and internet services, in general, is IP address information. Going forward IP address information is considered personal information and must be detailed in privacy policies and protected in the same way that any other personal information is.

In the course of providing services to you, Freethought will collect IP address information about your customers on your behalf. We also collect this information about our customers as per our privacy policy.

We collect IP address information in several different places for several reasons, you should reflect this in your privacy policies to your customers, visitors, employees, and anyone else you collect personal information about.

  • Access logs - We log the IP address of anyone visiting your website or any website we host as part of providing access logs. You can view and manage these logs within your hosting control panel. We will also use these logs to detect, prevent, and analyse instances of fraud and criminal activity such as "hacking" your website if it were to occur. We will also use these logs in the course of providing you with technical support.

  • Email logs - We log every connection to our servers via IMAP, POP3, SMTP and webmail, we do this so that we can detect and prevent fraud and criminal activity, plus so that we defend our network against threats. We also use this information to provide you with technical support should you have a problem sending or receiving emails.

  • Other logs - Several other protocols log access to them such as FTP and SSH, we also log access to the control panel which in the case of resellers means we're logging IP access of your customers. This information is logged so that we can detect and prevent fraud and criminal activity, as well as defend our infrastructure against threats. This information is also used in the course of providing technical support.

We cannot adjust the nature of the logs we collect, we go into more detail in our privacy policy. You should ensure that you inform your customers of this personal information collection.

Important - Freethought urges you to seek independent legal advice on this matter, we make no guarantees as to the accuracy and applicability of the information provided.

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