in piwik/config/global.ini.php there is an API URL defined:
api_service_url = http://api.piwik.org
This means to me, that Piwik sends all my private statistics to their own server for aggregation and analysis. And please do not tell me that “they respect my privacy” stories, because if this is technologically possible, it will be done. Because of this fact, Piwik is no better than Google Analytics, it is even worse because it uses resources of my server.
My question is what this API call is necessary for and if I can completely disable it and still have a (reduced) functionality?
Next time, please look at the source code before making that kind of accusation, or letting your imagination run wild.
Piwik is open source. You need only grep the code to see that the api.piwik.org URL is only used to:
periodically check if a new version of Piwik is available for download
at Installation, subscribe to the community and security email newsletters
If you don’t want to be informed of upgrades, then feel free to set the url to blank, and disable the update check. For the newsletters, there should be a link in the email to manage your subscription if you previously opted in.
I am using Piwik with Magento. However I did not find any working Magnto extention to deep integrate Piwik except for Jirafe, which is, just like Piwik, is free.
I have tried it out and found that it is a hosted piwik solution without the shop owner being able to log in to his own Piwik account on https://data.jirafe.com. The only possibility to look at his own Piwik statistics is the dashboard provided with the extention. I was very angry at Jirafe, because they provide their extention without clearly informing on how it actually works and why it is free.
It feels like a bad deal to me: “I give you something but I don’t tell you what I am taking from you” (you may find it out by yourself). In e-commerce there are many free extentions that work like this.