Do Your Customers Know That Your Website Is Tracking Them?

• Published date: 19 September 2023
• Subject Matter: Media, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment, Privacy, IT and Internet, Data Protection
• Law Firm: Schoenherr Attorneys at Law
• Author: Mr 'ron Hegyi and M'té Dura

Many local enterprises use ad management and marketing tools from tech giants like Meta (formerly known as Facebook), TikTok and Google (Meta Pixel, TikTok Pixel, Google Analytics), enabling them to reach their intended audience more effectively and track visitor activity on their websites. You cannot find a marketing professional today who would not suggest at least one of these services to their clients.

These services use "pixels" - trackers embedded in websites - to gather data about visitors. The data collected includes viewed products, search histories, chosen options and frequency of site visits. The possibilities are limitless. Data from users is analysed, creating detailed profiles to facilitate targeted advertising and personalised content delivery. Picture your Facebook timeline: relevant news, articles and adverts are displayed as if someone had handpicked them for you.

This is no coincidence, as the gathered information helps companies identify their target audience, reach potential customers and adjust to their requirements. The more thoroughly a business understands the preferences of its potential customers, the better the conversion rate will be from visitors to customers, and from customers to regulars.

Using pixels is relatively straightforward. By accessing the appropriate control panel (such as Google Analytics or Meta Business Settings), a hidden tracking tool can be added to a website with only a few clicks. This tool will record and send visitor activity to various analytics software for processing.

Businesses using pixel tracking receive analysis on a great deal of data. For example, Facebook's tracker records 17 different events related to a website visit. It keeps track of the user's purchased items, subscriptions, wishlists and shopping cart contents. The service provider registers this information, linking it to the visitor's IP address, device, geographical location and even screen resolution.

The user data collected in this process is not only accessible to the company using this service, but also to the service provider (e.g. Meta) itself, which may store its data on users in the European Union as well as in...