Hotjar

Hotjar describes itself as behavior analytics software rather than a service built around model training on customer content.

Sensitive fields are blocked by default and data is framed as being used to understand website behavior.

Hotjar positions privacy-by-design and compliance controls as part of its product model.

Session recordings, surveys, and identify features can still capture sensitive business or user context if customers configure collection poorly.

Behavioral analytics still means individual interactions can be reconstructed in some workflows.

Identify API fields, surveys, and customer setup can still expose more personal data than a site owner intends.

Third-party infrastructure and the controller's own implementation choices still affect who may ultimately access the captured data.

Hotjar says collected data must be used solely by the site or app owner unless explicit consent has been received for sharing.

The company says it never sells personal data.

Hotjar explicitly frames itself as the processor while the website owner remains the controller.

The product stores collected data so the website owner can access it through Hotjar.

Analytics and observability tools can collect identifiers, events, session replays, logs, traces, device data, and usage metadata.

Teams can reduce exposure with masking, consent mode, sampling, log scrubbing, retention controls, and restricted access.

Survey responses can persist longer depending on customer use and manual deletion.

Retention and deletion still depend on whether the site owner actually uses the provided privacy features correctly.

Recordings and heatmaps are retained for 365 days.

User Lookup can be used to find and delete data collected about a visitor.

Visitors can request access to or deletion of data through the website owner.

Suppression and consent controls can reduce what gets retained in the first place.

User Lookup gives controllers a direct way to find and delete a visitor's collected data.

Do Not Track, cookie disabling, and suppression features give visitors real ways to reduce collection.

Site owners can configure masking, suppression, consent handling, and identify settings.

Hotjar documents access and deletion rights clearly for website visitors.

Privacy still depends heavily on the website owner enabling suppression and consent correctly.

Features like recordings, surveys, and identify fields can override a privacy-friendly outcome if used aggressively.