Do-not-track remains something of a question mark, both in the United States and in Europe. Legislation is pending on both sides of the pond. While no one can say for certain what new data tracking laws will apply, it’s more than safe to assume that legislation will be introduced that allows consumers to opt-out of tracking by marketers and e-commerce sites.
TagMan is not only working on a number of do-not-track industry self-regulation initiatives, we’ve also baked do-not-track compliance directly into our tag management solution that works not only now, but will comply with any future regulations or legislation.Angus Glover Wilson, TagMan’s chief privacy officer, explains.
‘‘TagMan has a uniquely powerful position within the ‘stack’ of data collection and tracking devices that operate on our clients’ websites. We are effectively a single layer that sits between the Internet user’s browser and the tags and cookies that are ‘fired’ and ‘dropped’ when the user visits a website running our system. This enables us to help manage when and how that user will be tracked by the other systems operating on the website, according to the wishes of the user and of the site owner.
‘‘We have always allowed users to actively opt-out of being tracked by TagMan, and thereby to also opt-out of being served whichever tags our clients may determine to be worthy of honoring this opt-out. For example, a client may decide to activate the opt-out for third-party behavioral targeting tags they deploy through TagMan (and so cease to deliver those particular tags to opted-out visitors), but to continue serving tags for their first-party site analytics system. In this way we provide a way for website owners to be confident they have the flexibility to make and keep the kind of tracking opt-out promises that various laws and regulations around the world may require of them, while retaining the ability to continue using tracking systems that do not require such opt-outs.
‘‘Going forward, as well as the opt-out feature that a user may directly select by clicking a link on our clients’ websites or at TagMan.com, we are also engaging the opt-out for any user who has the ‘do-not-track’ option set in their web browser. This feature is a part of most of the latest generation browsers, and is fast becoming the default technological solution for the online marketing industry seeking to comply with various cookie-tracking rules in markets worldwide.’’
Can TagMan enforce Do Not Track headers for tools that are not deployed through your container tag? If a user opts out of TagMan data collection, does that mean they automatically opt-out of all of the tags in the container tag?
Thanks Ben,
Answers to your 2 questions:
1) TagMan can only apply the opt-out (or any do-not-track observance) to systems whose tags are being served through TagMan – we have no visibility or control of other systems’ tags which may be serving directly in the page.
2) The TagMan client gets to decide, on a case-by-case basis, which of their tags to allow their site visitors to opt-out from receiving. In other words, a client may decide their first party analytics system tags should continue to serve to opted out users, whereas their third party retargeting vendor tags should not serve to opted out users. This decision depends on the client, their company location and audience location, their industry, their tracking/tagging activities, their interpretation of the relevant laws/regulations/guidelines, and of course their privacy policy and the ‘contract’ they are making with their users when they present the opt-out link to them.
I hope this helps.
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