Is Drift GDPR compliant?

What does Drift do?

Conversational marketing that qualifies leads through chat. It profiles visitors to route them to sales, which is marketing rather than support, so consent is required before it loads.

Does Drift need consent?

Yes. Drift is Chat, which is never strictly necessary for a website to function. Under ePrivacy Article 5(3), and its national transpositions, storing or reading anything on the device for that purpose requires consent first, and that consent has to be as easy to refuse as it is to give.

ePrivacy Art. 5(3) · TDDDG § 25 (DE) · TKG 2021 § 165(3) (AT) · GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)

Does Drift send data outside the EEA?

Yes. Drift processes data outside the European Economic Area, so you need a transfer mechanism under Chapter V and you have to say so in your privacy policy. In practice this means standard contractual clauses, or a provider certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

GDPR Art. 44 · GDPR Art. 46

What can I use instead of Drift?

How do we detect Drift?

We load your page in a real browser as a first-time visitor who clicks nothing, then look at what it contacted. Drift is recognised by requests to drift.com and driftt.com, and we report whether it merely loaded or actually sent data, and whether it set a cookie before any choice was made.