ConsenSys issued an updated privacy policy agreement on November 23. The agreement states that from that date, MetaMask would start collecting the Ethereum wallet addresses and IP addresses of its clients whenever on-chain transactions are made.

However, ConsenSys, the company that developed the wallet, clarifies that user data collection will only take place if users use the Infura Remote Procedure Call (RPC) program that is included with MetaMask by default.

People who run their own Ethereum node or use a third-party RPC provider in conjunction with MetaMask are exempt from ConsenSys’ recently revised privacy policy, as they do not use the service.

Instead, you are subject to the terms of the other RPC provider.

According to ConsenSys, information collected in this manner may be disclosed to affiliates in the course of conducting business or to comply with Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering requirements. These requirements may be imposed by law enforcement.

With over 21 million users actively using the platform on a monthly basis, MetaMask is currently one of the most popular self-custody wallets available on the market.

While this was going on, Hayden Adams, the man who invented the Uniswap protocol, was answering questions explaining that the decentralized exchange does not monitor IPs and does not allow third-party tools on the platform to do so either.

ConsenSys has joined the ranks of other large Web 3 companies like Coinbase that have implemented IP harvesting in part due to increasingly stringent industry laws.