Contacts and IP addresses

Tom Troughton asked on March 17, 2015 15:16

I'm interested in understanding how Kentico recognises individual contacts. For example, what policy does it use to differentiate multiple anonymous contacts with the same IP address and user agent (e.g. multiple users from same company network)?

I'm also keen to understand the implications of each of the settings detailed here. If Kentico is not configured to automatically recognise visitors by IP or user agent, then what criteria will it use? And why would I ever not want to log IP addresses?

One final thing, I assume the only reason I wouldn't enable global contacts would be if each of my sites wanted to track their contacts independently? I assume if global contacts are enabled then Kentico will track a single visitors activity over multiple sites?

Correct Answer

David Komárek answered on June 10, 2015 07:43

Hi Nat,

thanks for asking. By default, Kentico uses the cookie (or sessions if the Remember contacts permanently setting is not used)to recognize contacts that access the site.

This is basically the best option, however, there are scenarios, where some of our clients use the extra settings for recognizing contacts based on the User agent and/or IP address if the contact is not recognized based on the cookie (for example another browser or another device).

My personal recommendation would be not use these extra options unless you really need to as it may introduce issues with contact merging if not used properly.

As for global contacts - if you only have one site or if you are using sites in your instance for different clients, it makes sense to turn this functionality off. On the other hand, if you have Blog, Ecommerce site and some microsite, where all of these belong to one company, I would recommend using this feature.

Best regard,

Dave

0 votesVote for this answer Unmark Correct answer