allow people to not identify by email

[ianstormtaylor]

since they might have database ids that they identify with instead. in this case, just send traits and no id all the time

[jpetey75]

to expand on this one we should give people the options to identify by WP username, WP user email or WP user ID, but the "only identify traits" is a great idea too - in that case it would be left up to the user to add their own .identify() call with the user ID they are using.

[ianstormtaylor]

The ideal here would be to just use the WordPress user ID, and everything else is just a trait. Only downside is I think most WordPress sites don't use the built-in user system, so this wouldn't cover their use case, and they'd want basic emails for commenters instead I think. But I'm not sure.

[jpetey75]

ok the options should be email or WP user ID

[ianstormtaylor]

@JustinSainton is this still relevant?

[sperand-io]

@ianstormtaylor i'll take a crack at getting this in this week. we should definitely prioritize for people who want to use GA user-id views

"I think our default going forward should be to identify by the database ID, but then have a setting (that defaults to false for new installs) for "Identify by email address." that they can toggle on in the WordPress admin."

My only concern is whether I can figure out how to manage this settings defaults dance properly:

Goal:

• Introduce new setting: "Identify Users by Email Address"
  • On fresh install: default to false
  • On upgrade from previous version: default to true
• Introduce new setting: "Identify Commenters by Email Address ":
  • On fresh install: default to false (wouldnt identify commenters at all)
  • On upgrade from previous version: default to true

Could also just pass 'Google Analytics': false in the commenter-specific identify call here: https://github.com/segmentio/analytics-wordpress/blob/master/analytics-wordpress.php#L753-L762

[ianstormtaylor]

@sperand-io nice! Actually I think our stance these days should just be only to identify by a user_id ant not let people identify by email instead. And then when we can we at least attach anonymous traits with email to commenters. That will adhere to what we want to do in the future best I think.

We'd need to major bump so that people don't try to upgrade I guess.

[sperand-io]

cool! sounds a lot easier too :)

[jpetey75]

cool... keep in mind a ton of people use the plugin and I'm guessing most of them won't really pay attention to version updates, they'll just do it

so we should probably have backwards compatibility and put a warning in the WP admin when they upgrade or something so they know they need to upgrade, but they can read the implications before doing it... probably something we would want to ask justin for help with

[simontabor]

Just stumbled across this commit (80d750a) and the discussion on user_id's being emails in WP.

GoSquared expects the user_id to be a user_id, it's not interchangeable with an email address. This means that our customers who are using both a standard integration AND wordpress are getting duplicate users tracked in People Analytics. So basically +1 on not having emails tracked by default!

[husseiny]

Sending email addresses to Google Analytics goes against Google's policy:

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/policy

You will not upload any data that allows Google to personally identify an individual (such as certain names, Social Security Numbers, email addresses, or any similar data), or data that permanently identifies a particular device (such as a unique device identifier if such an identifier cannot be reset).