Sometimes you may want to turn off a Session ID and not use it to recognize visitor’s sessions. It could be because you want to stay compliant with some privacy laws or for other reasons.
The Session ID is a way to identify each session. Our backend tracker creates a hash for each session based on the visitor’s IP address, operating system, browser name, browser version, browser language and enabled browser plugins. During tracking, a temporary link between Session ID and Visitor ID is created. The tracker uses that link to recognize events belonging to the same session.
The link between Session ID and Visitor ID expires 30 minutes after the last event. Since we don’t store the Session ID anywhere else, it’s impossible to determine returning visitors relying solely on its value.
The hash itself is not available in any report, but the data used for creating it is visible in raw requests in the tracker debugger for 6 hours. After that time, it’s stored in raw log format for 30 days, but it’s not available in the application interface (We store it only for security reasons: (1) to protect us against malicious actions and bots, (2) to troubleshoot any tracking issues, (3) to recover data in case of data losses.). After that time, it’s permanently deleted.
The tracker uses Session ID as a primary mechanism to recognize sessions or as a fallback mechanism when it can’t create cookies and use Visitor ID.
To turn off Session ID, follow these steps:
- Go to Menu > Administration.
- Navigate to Sites & apps.
- On the left, pick a site or app you want to work with.
- Navigate to Privacy.
- Ask visitors for consent needs to be turned off.
- Turn off Use a session ID.
- Click Save.
Comparison of options
Now we’ll show you how your data can differ after turning off device fingerprinting. We’ll also compare other options used for collecting data so that you know how combining them can affect your data.
| Cookies & session ID | No cookies | No session ID | No cookies & session ID | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mechanisms used to collect data | ||||
| First-party cookies | (1) | (1) | ||
| Local storage | ||||
| Session ID | (2) | |||
| Visitor’s IP address | Yes / No (3) | Yes / No (3) | ||
| Visitor ID | ||||
| Collected data | ||||
| Capture all traffic | ||||
| New vs. returning visitors | ||||
| Visitor’s session | (4) | |||
| Visitor’s location | Latitude, Longitude, Organization, Provider, City, Region, Country, Continent | Latitude, Longitude, Organization, Provider, City, Region, Country, Continent | Latitude, Longitude, Organization, Provider, City, Region, Country, Continent | Latitude, Longitude, Organization, Provider, City, Region, Country, Continent |
| Events | ||||
| Traffic sources | ||||
| Channel attribution | Last-click, position-based, first-click, last-non-direct-click, time-decay, linear and custom models | Last-click | Last-click, position-based, first-click, last-non-direct-click, time-decay, linear and custom models | |
| Privacy laws | ||||
| Compliant with | Countries without privacy laws, CCPA (5) |
Cookie laws | Cookie laws | GDPR, UK GDPR/PECR (6), TTDSG (6) |
- Some triggers in Tag Manager set cookies to work correctly.
- We create a session ID to recognize the visitor’s session. We use it only for 30 minutes since the last event.
- You can mask IP addresses for visitors under Administration > Sites & apps > Privacy > Mask IP addresses. The IP address informs about visitor’s location. This option removes the selected number of bytes from the address before saving it to the database. Nobody will ever see the full address. Masking it can enhance visitors privacy because you won’t recognize their full location.
- Each event is a new session.
- You need to add an opt-out form (“do not sell my personal data”).
- Assuming the product is set up not to store additional device-level information like screen resolution or browser plugins. Set it up in Administration > Sites & apps > Privacy > Don’t collect visitor’s device data (on).