{"id":11295,"date":"2017-08-08T18:11:43","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T16:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saasweb.agency\/blog\/wordpress-share-posts-or-pages-with-facebook-or-twitter-privacy-compliant\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T08:19:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T07:19:22","slug":"wordpress-share-posts-or-pages-with-facebook-or-twitter-privacy-compliant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saasweb.agency\/en\/blog\/wordpress-share-posts-or-pages-with-facebook-or-twitter-privacy-compliant\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress: Share Posts or Pages with Facebook or Twitter \u2013 Privacy Compliant"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the past, share buttons were found exclusively on blogs below individual posts; now, they are also visible on many corporate websites. Share buttons are intended to encourage visitors to inform their networks that they find a post interesting (Like) or even to recommend it\u2014this posts the article (title, introduction, and image) to their own feed so that all “friends” or “followers” are informed. <\/p>\n

How does this work, and what must a website operator do to provide this functionality?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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How Sharing Works (in Most Cases)<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Most share buttons currently in use become active as soon as a visitor accesses the page where they are placed\u2014in doing so, they reveal that the page was loaded from a specific IP address, including the time, as well as data such as browser, device, and resolution. If the visitor happens to be logged into the network at the same time, the social network operator can identify the visitor at that moment and use the collected data for advertising purposes. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Visitors Are Tracked Without Their Knowledge<\/h3>\n
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According to German data privacy laws, it is not permitted to pass a user’s data to third parties without informing them. However, this is exactly what happens so often. Information regarding the integration of social networks like Facebook or Twitter is usually stored on the Legal Notice page\u2014but this page is rarely the entry point. Furthermore, users must be informed BEFORE data is passed to third parties… <\/p>\n

Regardless of data privacy regulations or laws: it should be a matter of course not to secretly pass your guests’ data to third parties; you should fundamentally ensure that data remains private.<\/p>\n

A little side story: a few years ago (2011), Google got into a dispute with a Hamburg data protection commissioner regarding the integration of Google Analytics into websites. Many websites use this “free” service from Google to analyze visitor activity. In the process, data about the visitor is sent to Google with every page view (IP address, device, browser, page accessed, etc.). The data protection commissioner threatened to issue warnings to all website operators who integrated Google Analytics on their homepages. It didn’t come to that; Google made some changes to its integration so that the transmitted data is anonymized. My comment on this: just use Piwik<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sharing in a Privacy-Compliant Way with Shariff<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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For WordPress websites, there is a free extension called Shariff Wrapper<\/a> to integrate various “Share with” buttons. Shariff supports the following networks, among others: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Xing\u201422 in total. <\/p>\n

The plugin is particularly interesting because it not only manages buttons and placement through direct settings, but can also be positioned individually using shortcodes. And there is something for theme developers too: the function do_shortcode()<\/code> provides the opportunity to create even more customized integrations. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Why Shariff Is Privacy Compliant<\/h3>\n
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Unlike most “Share” integrations, no data is initially passed to third parties when the page is loaded. The functionality is only activated (via JavaScript) when the corresponding icon is clicked. It’s that simple! <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Installation and Setup of Shariff<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Step 1<\/h3>\n
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It could hardly be easier:<\/p>\n