As part of the required connection to WordPress.com, Jetpack caches your site’s data to WordPress.com servers (which power all of Jetpack’s functionality). Jetpack syncs all the data required by all of its features, whether they are activated or not, to Automattic’s servers.
We’re glad to help supercharge and protect your site, and we want to be clear about what’s happening with your data behind the scenes, including what data is synced and used when you use Jetpack and connect it to Automattic’s servers. Please note that when we refer to Jetpack, we mean any Jetpack plugins developed by Automattic (like Jetpack, Jetpack Boost, and Jetpack Search).
To take advantage of the valuable features of Jetpack, certain information about the content, settings, and configuration of your site must be synced with our servers. This data begins to sync when Jetpack is installed and connected to WordPress.com.
It is important to note that Jetpack syncs all the data required by all of its features, whether they are activated or not, to Automattic’s servers.
We handle synced data as outlined in our Privacy Policy.
Content and Settings
To display accurate information about your site in places such as notification emails and the WordPress.com Reader, Jetpack syncs the following information:
- Site name
- Site tagline
- Site timezone
- Site locale
- Permalink structure
To allow the creation and management of content from different locations and devices (e.g. from the WordPress.com desktop app or Jetpack (formerly WordPress.com) mobile app, information about the following is also synced:
- Posts, including the WordPress.com user ID of the author
- Pages, including the WordPress.com user ID of the author
- Custom post types
- Any related metadata, including:
- Whether the post is public
- Whether the post is excluded from search
- The permalink of the post
- The excerpt of the post, if available
- The WP.me shortlink of the post, if available
- External ID (specific to the site in question) of the post author
- The featured image of the post, if available
This index of your content helps to reduce the load on your site’s servers and also allows related content and an optimized search index to be generated and displayed where appropriate.
User-Related Data
Jetpack syncs miscellaneous bits of user information, such as:
- The user IDs, usernames, email addresses, roles, and capabilities of registered users. This does not include passwords
- The user ID of any users who modify the site and the time that changes are made (e.g. ID of the user who added a new user, modified the site icon, or trashed a comment)
- Twitter username, if configured with Jetpack
- Jetpack Social connection data, which includes email addresses and usernames associated with connected services
- For WordAds customers, we also sync the account’s email address and physical address. Review the complete terms of service for the program here
- Successful and failed login attempts (this includes the IP address and user agent of the individual performing the login action)
This user-related data is utilized by Jetpack in a variety of ways, including:
- Preventing unauthorized access
- Providing Activity log
- Managing subscribers and followers
- Seamless integration with third-party social media services
Themes and Plugins
The following information related to themes and plugins is synced:
- The name of any themes or plugins currently in use
- The version and capabilities (e.g. featured image, menu locations, and pending updates)
- Plugin installation path
This enables Jetpack to provide services such as:
- Remote plugin installation and management via WordPress.com
- Automatic plugin updates
- Automatic theme updates
- Theme installation
- Theme customization from WordPress.com (including via the desktop or mobile apps)
- Aggregated statistics and insights
Additional Data
We also sync the following data to further enable and improve the functionality of Jetpack:
- Comments and their associated metadata, including:
- Comment author name
- Comment author email address
- Comment author URL
- Comment author IP address
- Comment author Wordress.com user ID, if known
- Comment author external (specific to the site in question) user ID, if known
- Taxonomies (including categories and tags)
- Custom taxonomies (if used on the site)
- Menus
- All allowlisted options, constants, and function outputs (e.g. whether the site is a multi-site install)
- All core WordPress and Jetpack options
- Some WooCommerce options and data
Syncing these pieces of information enables a number of features, including comment spam defense (if using Akismet), displaying notifications, including categorized content in the WordPress.com Reader, as well as adding the ability to edit your menus and post data directly from WordPress.com (including through the desktop and mobile apps).
Data Used by Feature
As a reminder, Jetpack syncs all the data required by all of its features, whether they are activated or not, to Automattic’s servers. But you can dig into what data each feature or module uses, by clicking on any of the following links to review more in-depth privacy information. Note that some features are automatically activated; you can find deactivation instructions at the following links, as well.
Have any questions about a specific feature’s privacy or sync-related documentation? Get in touch.
WooCommerce Shipping & Tax
WooCommerce Shipping & Tax uses Automattic’s servers and a connection to our partners to enable useful features for your store. Some of these features (such as those relating to tax calculations and shipping) require data from your site to work.
Payments
If you choose to accept payments with Stripe or PayPal, we may share the email address you provide us with whichever service you’ve chosen to determine whether there’s an existing account and, if one doesn’t exist, automatically create one. Please note that if you use Stripe, they provide us with access to your payments data and account activity. We do not store this data.
When processing payments, some of your — and your customer’s — data will be passed to the respective third party, including information required to process or support the payment, such as the purchase total and your customer’s billing information.
Please see the respective third party’s privacy policy (Stripe’s Privacy Policy and PayPal’s Privacy Policy) for more details.
Tax Calculations
Tax Calculations are provided by TaxJar. If you use the tax calculations feature, TaxJar receives information related to your customer’s purchase, including the value of goods in your customer’s cart, the value of shipping, your address, and the destination address. All data that flows between your site and Automattic, and between Automattic and TaxJar, is encrypted, end to end, via HTTPS. Please see TaxJar’s Privacy Policy for details about how they handle this information.
Shipping Rates and Labels
To take advantage of the real-time shipping rates and shipping label features of WooCommerce Shipping & Tax, certain information about you and your customer (as it relates to shipping), shopping carts, orders, and the configuration of your site are passed to our partners, EasyPost, and the respective mailing service, such as USPS or Canada Post, via Automattic’s servers. In terms of data handling, we validate (but do not store) data you send to us and then pass that data on to our partners. Our partners process the data under the terms of their agreements with Automattic and their own privacy policies. All data that flows between your site and Automattic, and between Automattic and our partners, is encrypted, end to end, via HTTPS.
To display real-time carrier shipping rates (such as for USPS and Canada Post), WooCommerce Shipping & Tax sends information related to a shipment from your site to our servers, including:
- Shipping zone settings for validation, when you (the merchant) make changes and when fetching the rates for the customer, including origin postcode, list of enabled delivery services, and list of custom packages you add to the packaging manager
- Purchased products’ dimensions, weight, product IDs, and quantity
- Package destination address (street, postcode, city, country, state)
Additionally, once each day, WooCommerce Shipping & Tax asks our servers for any updates to the settings for each shipping service. This allows us to add new services and shipping options without you having to explicitly update. We store certain portions of this data (such as user ID, site ID, store location, currency, package/product dimensions, and software versions). This data is not shared with our partners.
To provide shipping labels, WooCommerce Shipping & Tax sends shipping information from your site to our servers, including:
- Merchant and customer names, addresses, and phone numbers
- Label packaging settings (dimensions and weight of the packages)
- Your selected WordPress.com payment method
To purchase shipping labels, you are required to have a payment method (credit card) saved on file with WordPress.com. We keep a copy of each shipping label on our servers, and our partners also keep a copy of shipping labels on their servers. This makes it easier for you to reprint labels and receive help with any support requests.
Orders
We sync any data related to your site’s orders, with the following exceptions:
- Purchaser’s billing and shipping street address
- Purchasing billing and shipping company’s name
- Purchaser’s email address
- Purchaser’s phone number
- Transaction ID
- Purchaser’s IP address
- Purchaser’s user agent
Usage Data Collection
To help improve WooCommerce Shipping & Tax, our server automatically logs each request from your site. Each request is tagged with a unique ID that your site randomly generates when WooCommerce Shipping & Tax is activated for the first time. This unique ID is an anonymous identifier that is not mapped back to you. To protect the anonymity of you and your customers, we strip merchant and customer identifying details (the merchant name, street address, phone number, and customer name, street address, and phone number) from each request before it’s logged.
Additional Data
We also sync the following data with each request:
- Shipping zone settings, used for validation
- Fetching payment methods, as configured on WordPress.com
Syncing this data enables a number of useful features, including showing appropriate shipping methods and making sure we return correctly translated text and units of measurement for your store.
We also collect information about what happens when you use our services (e.g., page views, button clicks, etc.) along with information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type and operating system. We use this information to, for example, provide our services to you, as well as gain insights on how people use our services and how we can improve those services.
Please refer to our public code repository for all WooCommerce-related data points synced via Jetpack.
More Information
If you’d like to read in more detail about what we sync, why, and what we do with it, please refer to these additional resources:
- Automattic Terms of Service
- Automattic Privacy Policy
- Automattic Transparency Report
- List of default site options synced by Jetpack (GitHub)
- List of user actions synced by Jetpack (GitHub)
- List of WooCommerce options, settings, and data synced by Jetpack (GitHub)
- List of browser cookies set/used by Jetpack
- WordAds Terms of Service (only applicable to those using the service)
Still need help?
Please contact support directly. We’re happy to advise.
Jetpack 