"Why do you ask for so little information at checkout?" We get that question more often than you'd think — from organisers used to other platforms, where a date of birth and a full postal address are simply part of the order form. The answer: MijnEvent is built privacy-first. We collect as little data about your visitors as possible and we do nothing else with it — no analyses, no profiles, no data trade. In this article we explain what we do and don't ask, why we think a date of birth adds nothing to a ticket, and which question you're entitled to ask any ticket platform.
A name and an email address — a ticket needs nothing more
Anyone buying a ticket through MijnEvent fills in two pieces of personal data: a name and an email address. The name so you can address your visitor and put the ticket in their name, the email address so the tickets can be sent somewhere. That's it. No date of birth, no full address with street and house number, no mandatory phone number.
At many other platforms it looks different. In our opinion all that extra adds nothing for a ticket — you don't need to know which street someone lives on to let them into your event. The GDPR even has a principle for this: data minimisation, i.e. collect only what's needed for the purpose. We take that literally.
There's a down-to-earth sales argument attached, too: every extra field in an order form costs you buyers. A checkout you complete in seconds — on a phone, late at night on the couch — simply loses fewer people than a form that feels like a mortgage application.
Optional: the city — for you, not for us
One field we leave to the buyer: their city. It's an optional field in the checkout; whoever leaves it empty orders just as easily. If someone does fill it in, you'll see it as the organiser in your visitor list — for your information. That can be genuinely useful: you see where your audience comes from, where to promote the next edition, or whether that shuttle bus makes sense.
We do nothing else with it. No profiles, no analyses, no "enrichment". The city sits in your visitor list and nowhere else. That's how we treat all visitor data, by the way — buyer email addresses are even masked by default in the admin, and every reveal is logged.
The question you're allowed to ask any ticket platform
Which leaves the question: what happens to the dates of birth and full addresses of all those ticket buyers at platforms that do ask for them? Are those datasets used for the platform's own big-data analyses? For its own marketing profiles? That differs per company — and it's rarely spelled out in the order flow. But the counter-question is at least as interesting: what does all that detail add for you as an organiser? In our view: very little. It doesn't fill your venue and it doesn't improve your service.
And don't forget: it's your event and they are your visitors. As the organiser you're the data controller under the GDPR — so you're well within your rights to be critical about what gets asked in your ticket shop's name, and about the why.
What about tracking?
We draw the same line for marketing tracking: MijnEvent's event pages and checkout run no tracking pixels whatsoever — no Meta, no Google Tag Manager, no Google Ads, no TikTok. Our pages are free of tracking cookies, so no cookie banner needs to slide into view either. What you do get: cookie-free visitor statistics in your admin, and two building blocks to measure your ad campaigns from click to conversion on your own website. How that works — and why we make this choice — is covered in Why MijnEvent doesn't place tracking pixels (and how to measure conversions anyway).
Less data, a cleaner checkout
A name to address someone, an email address to send the tickets to and — if the buyer chooses to — a city for your information. A ticket needs nothing more. Privacy first doesn't mean you're not allowed to know anything; it means no more is collected than necessary, and that your visitors' data is not your ticket platform's business model. The checkout stays clean — no onlookers, no questions a ticket has no use for. Questions about how we handle data? We're happy to think along.
