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A person’s identity can be:
- anonymous (we don’t know anything about this person yet),
- or named (we know something about them such as an email address.)
Named
The most common named identity is an email address. Every other attribute can be used instead of an email address as long as it's unique. Usernames or User ID numbers are are also occasionally used as named identities.
Anonymous
A identifier for an anonymous user is normally generated (a surrogate key) as it does not require any central authority.
Whenever a person gives an identifiant such as an email address via a form, this information should be captured and the anonymous identity should be converted into a named identity.
Examples:
- A daily changing random identifier using the visitor’s IP address and User Agent.
- More …see the dedicated article What is a Surrogate Primary key? known also as Substitute, Synthetic or Generated Key - Logical Data Modeling -
Technology
Fingerprint
An anonymous identity may be also targeted through their computer's browser. The browser is the identification. See Web - Browser Fingerprinting
Note that device-persistent identifier such as browser fingerprint is forbidden because these are considered personal data under GDPR.
Android Advertising ID
The android platform offers also a targeting service known as the Android Advertising ID (AAID)
On your android device, open Google Settings app > tap Ads > then find Your advertising ID.
Privacy / Anonymous
Storage
After an identification, generally,
- the userId is stored:
- and or in local storage (userId or anonymousId)
- the users traits are stored in local storage.
This data is used by all tracker calls to attribute the actions (stamp the actions with the user id)