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+# Usage statistics
+
+GitLab Inc. will periodically collect information about your instance in order
+to perform various actions.
+
+All statistics are opt-in and you can always disable them from the admin panel.
+
+## Version check
+
+GitLab can inform you when an update is available and the importance of it.
+
+No information other than the GitLab version and the instance's domain name
+are collected.
+
+In the **Overview** tab you can see if your GitLab version is up to date. There
+are three cases: 1) you are up to date (green), 2) there is an update available
+(yellow) and 3) your version is vulnerable and a security fix is released (red).
+
+In any case, you will see a message informing you of the state and the
+importance of the update.
+
+If enabled, the version status will also be shown in the help page (`/help`)
+for all signed in users.
+
+## Usage ping
+
+> [Introduced][ee-557] in GitLab Enterprise Edition 8.10. More statistics
+[were added][ee-735] in GitLab Enterprise Edition
+8.12. [Moved to GitLab Community Edition][ce-23361] in 9.1.
+
+GitLab Inc. can collect non-sensitive information about how GitLab users
+use their GitLab instance upon the activation of a ping feature
+located in the admin panel (`/admin/application_settings`).
+
+You can see the **exact** JSON payload that your instance sends to GitLab
+in the "Usage statistics" section of the admin panel.
+
+Nothing qualitative is collected. Only quantitative. That means no project
+names, author names, comment bodies, names of labels, etc.
+
+The usage ping is sent in order for GitLab Inc. to have a better understanding
+of how our users use our product, and to be more data-driven when creating or
+changing features.
+
+The total number of the following is sent back to GitLab Inc.:
+
+- Comments
+- Groups
+- Users
+- Projects
+- Issues
+- Labels
+- CI builds
+- Snippets
+- Milestones
+- Todos
+- Pushes
+- Merge requests
+- Environments
+- Triggers
+- Deploy keys
+- Pages
+- Project Services
+- Projects using the Prometheus service
+- Issue Boards
+- CI Runners
+- Deployments
+- Geo Nodes
+- LDAP Groups
+- LDAP Keys
+- LDAP Users
+- LFS objects
+- Protected branches
+- Releases
+- Remote mirrors
+- Uploads
+- Web hooks
+
+Also, we track if you've installed Mattermost with GitLab.
+For example: `"mattermost_enabled":true"`.
+
+More data will be added over time. The goal of this ping is to be as light as
+possible, so it won't have any performance impact on your installation when
+the calculation is made.
+
+### Deactivate the usage ping
+
+By default, usage ping is opt-out. If you want to deactivate this feature, go to
+the Settings page of your administration panel and uncheck the Usage ping
+checkbox.
+
+## Privacy policy
+
+GitLab Inc. does **not** collect any sensitive information, like project names
+or the content of the comments. GitLab Inc. does not disclose or otherwise make
+available any of the data collected on a customer specific basis.
+
+Read more about this in the [Privacy policy](https://about.gitlab.com/privacy).
+
+[ee-557]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/merge_requests/557
+[ee-735]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/merge_requests/735
+[ce-23361]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/23361