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Is this web tracking approach legal?

by djames91
4 replies
Hi all,

We currently lose UTM parameters when a person navigates away from our landing page to another page on our site.

Like many, we implemented some Javascript to store the UTM parameters in a cookie, and submit them to a hidden form field.

This approach works fine when cookies are accepted, but we want to maintain UTM parameters even when cookies are not accepted.

Would it be legal to use Javascript to pass UTM parameters from one page to another?

For example, if a person lands on https:://example.com?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=examplec ampaign and clicks a link within that page, the UTM parameters are appended to the link.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

David
#analytics #approach #legal #tracking #web
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  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    Originally Posted by djames91 View Post

    Hi all,

    We currently lose UTM parameters when a person navigates away from our landing page to another page on our site.

    Like many, we implemented some Javascript to store the UTM parameters in a cookie, and submit them to a hidden form field.

    This approach works fine when cookies are accepted, but we want to maintain UTM parameters even when cookies are not accepted.

    Would it be legal to use Javascript to pass UTM parameters from one page to another?

    For example, if a person lands on https:://example.com?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=examplec ampaign and clicks a link within that page, the UTM parameters are appended to the link.

    Any advice would be much appreciated.

    Thanks!

    David
    You can parse all of this within your domain from your LOG file. Just takes a bit of Excel programming skill and all kinds of data sets are at your fingertips.
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    • Profile picture of the author djames91
      Thanks Savidge.

      Do we require user consent to do this in the same way we do for cookies?
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      • Profile picture of the author savidge4
        Originally Posted by djames91 View Post

        Thanks Savidge.

        Do we require user consent to do this in the same way we do for cookies?
        Its technically not a cookie... its tracking based on IP address. so if an end user with the IP address 123.9.9.1 goes to the main page the LOG file notates that... then the same user ( 123.9.9.1 ) goes to page #2, that is notated in the log file... and then to page 4 and 5 and 6 and so on. Its not a "Cookie"

        Let me throw it to you this way... All of my sites I own, and all of the sites I operate for others... not a 1 of them has "Cookies" They are 100% modern day cookie compliant. and this is because any and every piece of data I might need is in the LOG file ( and then some )

        The search term they used to get there from a search engine, its in there

        If you sort the data by IP address and then by time stamp, you can track the step by step movements of that specific user... throw in some simple math magic and you can determine time on page.

        You can use a site like ( https://www.iplocation.net/ ) and ini the top box insert a users IP address you have pulled from your log file and pull up geographic locations as an example ( and a host of other data ).

        simply download the log file into Excel as a comma delimited file and then you can start by sorting by the IP column. DO some fairly simple programming in Excell and you can all of the sudden have some pretty robust data.
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  • Profile picture of the author djames91
    OK so I implemented the JavaScript in a test environment, this works great and appends the UTM parameters to the next page, but getting buy in from our leadership for this approach is difficult.

    Has anyone on here used this approach before?

    Thanks
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