- No raw IP addresses are stored. With Privacy mode on (the default) Pulse keeps only a one-way fingerprint, scrambled with a secret that exists on your site alone. It is enough to tell two visitors apart and useless for anything else.
- Location comes from a file on your own server. The one-click database (DB-IP Lite, city level) means no visitor's address is sent to an outside service. Accuracy is city level at best, which is all a globe needs.
- Do Not Track is honoured by default: a browser that sends it is not recorded.
- Retention. Visits are cleared after the number of days you choose (30 by default) by a daily job. The Dashboard can only look back as far as you keep.
- Behind Cloudflare or another proxy? Tick Trust X-Forwarded-For so Pulse reads each visitor's real address from the proxy's header. Only tick it if you really are behind one.
- Allowed origins. Sites you add under Your Sites are allowed automatically. The box is for anything unusual.
Using a cookie banner? Pulse sets one first-party identifier so a returning visitor is one person, not two. If your policy treats that as analytics, list it in your cookie table.