Cross-Domain User Tracking via Device Attribute Hashing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Cookies are limited in their ability to track user behavior across different domains due to domain restrictions and privacy concerns, leading to challenges in maintaining user preferences and shopping cart items, and are often not usable for cross-domain tracking or multivariate testing.
Innovation Solution
A system that calculates a unique ID for a user device based on attributes such as browser, operating system, and location, allowing for tracking across domains without the need for cookies, using a hash function to generate a unique identifier that can match user behavior across different websites and domains.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If cookies are used for user identification and tracking, then user preferences and shopping cart items can be maintained within the same domain, but tracking across different domains becomes impossible due to domain restrictions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a third-party service provider as an intermediary that sets cookies on the user's browser. This intermediary cookie can be accessed by multiple domains through the common third-party service, enabling cross-domain tracking while maintaining domain security boundaries. The intermediary acts as a mediator that bridges the gap between different domains without violating domain restrictions.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If cookies are blocked by users due to privacy concerns, then user privacy is protected, but user behavior tracking and analysis become impossible
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses a third-party service provider as an intermediary to set and manage tracking cookies. This allows tracking functionality to persist even when users block first-party cookies, as the intermediary operates independently from the original website. The intermediary cookie structure enables continued data collection while attempting to maintain user trust through a separate, dedicated tracking service.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements preliminary actions by setting up the intermediary cookie infrastructure before user interactions occur. The third-party service provider pre-establishes the tracking mechanism in the user's browser, so that subsequent user behaviors across multiple domains can be automatically tracked without requiring additional user consent or intervention at each domain.
3Loss of energy
If session cookies are deleted after browser closure, then memory usage is reduced and privacy is enhanced, but tracking continuity across sessions is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by establishing the intermediary cookie with appropriate persistence settings before the user completes their browsing session. This ensures that the tracking identifier survives browser closure and session termination, enabling continuous tracking across multiple sessions without requiring the browser to maintain large amounts of active cookie data in memory.
Data Source
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AI summary
An online behavior tracking system includes a unique ID module configured to determine attributes of a user device, and calculate a unique ID for a user from the attributes. The unique ID is used to track online behavior for the user across different domains. Also, the online behavior tracking system is used in a content evaluation system which delivers content treatments to users and tracks online behavior of the users in response to the delivered treatments.