Component Analytics Anonymization – Inline Approach benefits & drawbacks

Yesterday, I showed you the Inline Approach to anonymization.

Today, I’m discussing the benefits and drawbacks of the approach.

Mostly comparing it to the Components Approach.

Benefits

• It’s even easier to set up. You take an inventory of the PII* you have on the customer, which is far less than the number of components on your site.
• You don’t have to keep pace with what components are being developed or updated. The PII you have on the customer usually changes less than the number of components.
• You get readable and aggregatable Interaction Component content. Which saves a lot of time during analysis.

Drawbacks

• You have to keep the blacklist updated. If you miss any PII in the blacklist, it may show up anywhere on the site. In the Components approach, forgetting to add a component to the whitelist isolates the PII to that component. Making it easier to find data leaks.
• It’s harder to implement for sites that have PII from other users such as social media sites. If you can click on people’s names for example you have to make sure to scrub the name.

These are two approaches I use today for anonymization.

How do you anonymize user data on your site?

– Samy

* Personally Identifiable Information