Can I turn off IP address capture?

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By default, IP addresses are discarded in Fullstory. If you wish to view and search on IP addresses in Fullstory, navigate to Settings > Data Capture and Privacy > Privacy and toggle this feature off.

Note: Only Admins or Umbrella Managers (available on select Fullstory Enterprise plans) can enable this setting.

Fullstory may temporarily store user IP addresses while sessions are being processed, but will actively discard them once sessions are completely processed. When this option is enabled, you will not be able to view user IP addresses or search for users by IP address in the Fullstory UI.

There are two purposes that IP addresses are potentially stored:

  1. Part of sessions and user metadata, for the purpose of making those IP addresses available and searchable in Fullstory. This data is retained until the session expires. When the "Discard user IP addresses" setting is enabled, IP addresses will be actively discarded after sessions are processed. 
  2. Part of routine access logs generated by Fullstory's network services to facilitate maintenance, debugging, auditing, and detection of abusive behavior. These logs are necessary for operational and security purposes. The logs are retained for up to 30 days and are inaccessible to Fullstory users.

The “Discard user IP addresses” setting affects case #1. IP addresses will not appear in sessions or user metadata when that option is enabled. however, it’s not possible to disable #2, because those logs are critical for the operation of our services.

While IP addresses for users are logged by internal Fullstory services, when the "Discard user IP addresses" setting is enabled, Fullstory will only store the user IP address in memory and discard it after applying the region or IP block rules. 

This setting is not retroactive, so if you have already captured some IP addresses they will continue to be searchable until the session exceeds your Product analytics retention period and has been deleted.


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