Tracking consent

Tracking consent enables you to stop tracking particular users, using cookies, if the user has not explicitly allowed tracking. Tracking consent works by displaying a Tracking consent dialog to the user the first time the user interacts with a site from a particular domain. It allows the user to either accept or decline tracking. If the user does not interact with the dialog, it will be displayed on every other page.

You use the Tracking consent functionality, if, for example, you do not want to gather statistical data that contains personal information, such as IP addresses, names, email addresses, posts on social networks, etc. Sitefinity CMS has several modules and connectors that gather such information. These are, for example, Sitefinity Insight and Marketo connectors. If you have created a custom cookie that is unique and is attached to a user to identify them, this can also be considered personal information.

The Tracking consent functionality stops gathering user data only when the Tracking consent is enabled and configured and the user has not explicitly accepted tracking or has explicitly declined tracking.

The tracking consent controls the collection of user data by the following Sitefinity CMS modules and features:

• Oracle Eloqua connector
• Sitefinity Insight connector, if configured
• Marketo connector, if configured
• Internal Sitefinity CMS page visit tracking
  It is part of the internal logging service and is used by the personalization module.
• Custom trackers
  You can also programmatically stop any custom trackers that you have created.

Tracking consent user choice is saved in a cookie named sf-tracking-consent on the client’s browser. The cookie expires in 9999 days. The cookie is set to true when the user consents to tracking their behavior, and to false when the user declines.
After you have turned it on, if the user has neither accepted nor declined, the default behavior of the Sitefinity CMS is as if the user has not consented to tracking.

Sitefinity Insight also uses the sf-tracking-consent cookie. If you are using third-party consent tracking, you need to ensure that you are properly managing this cookie to enable the proper functionality of Sitefinity Insight.

The user will be displayed a dialog only the first time they hit any page from a particular domain and the choice will be saved in the cookie.
The user will be displayed the dialog again, only if they clear browser cookies.

However, you can programmatically change this behavior. If you think that at some particular point when browsing the website, a user, who has initially declined tracking, should be asked again whether tracking can be enabled, you can display again the Tracking consent dialog.
For more information, see Tracking consent client-side API.