Hi there,
I’m Mohit, Product Manager at SureCookie,
Thank you for raising this, especially the specific question about when the IP address is masked. You are right that this distinction matters, and I want to answer it clearly rather than give you a general statement about GDPR compliance.
In the current version of SureCookie, the visitor’s IP address is sent to our geolocation service first so we can determine the country/region. The masking happens after that processing, before the IP address is stored in your WordPress consent logs.
So, to be completely transparent: the full IP does leave the WordPress site for that lookup before the stored value is anonymized.
A few additional details that may help with your assessment:
- This happens when a consent response is submitted, including when the visitor declines.
- The application server handling the geolocation lookup is hosted in an EU region.
- The lookup uses a MaxMind database stored on our server. The visitor’s IP is not sent to MaxMind for a separate external lookup.
- The request does pass through our CDN infrastructure, whose operator is US-based, which may be relevant to your own data-transfer assessment.
- The lookup is cached for seven days and the address is not written to our API request logs.
- For the anonymized value stored by SureCookie, we use WordPress core’s
wp_privacy_anonymize_ip() function.
Your other point is equally valid: site owners should have the option to avoid this IP-based geolocation request altogether if they do not want it.
We have therefore added a supported opt-out for the upcoming SureCookie v1.5.0 release:
add_filter( 'surecookie_skip_consent_logs_ips', '__return_true' );
With this enabled, SureCookie will not send the geolocation request at all. Country and region will not be determined, those fields in the consent record will remain empty, and the consent record itself will still be stored.
We also plan to make this available as a setting in the UI rather than requiring customers to add a filter.
If you want to stop these requests immediately on the current release, we have also tested the following workaround:
add_filter( 'pre_http_request', static function ( $pre, $args, $url ) {
if ( is_string( $url ) && false !== strpos( $url, '/api/geolocation/country' ) ) {
return new WP_Error( 'surecookie_geo_disabled', 'Geolocation disabled.' );
}
return $pre;
}, 10, 3 );
With this in place, no SureCookie geolocation request leaves the site, while the visitor’s consent record continues to be created.
I also want to acknowledge something important in your review. I don’t want to tell you that installing SureCookie, or any cookie plugin, makes a website “100% GDPR compliant.” Compliance depends on the website, its configuration, services being used, jurisdiction, and the site’s wider data-processing practices.
What we can and should do is be completely clear about what SureCookie processes, give site owners appropriate control over that processing, and improve the product when someone identifies a gap.
Your question highlighted exactly such a gap in the current controls, and it has helped reinforce the need for the no-IP option we are adding.
If you’d like to discuss your European setup with us further, please contact us at https://surecookie.com/contact/. We’ll be happy to work through the concerns with you properly.
