{"id":117798,"date":"2025-03-07T12:27:19","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T12:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/analytics\/gtmtips-remove-pii-from-google-analytics-hits\/"},"modified":"2025-03-07T12:27:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T12:27:19","slug":"gtmtips-remove-pii-from-google-analytics-hits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=117798","title":{"rendered":"#GTMTips: Remove PII From Google Analytics Hits"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Sending personally identifiable information<\/strong> (PII) to Google Analytics<\/a> is one of the things you should really avoid doing. For one, it\u2019s against the terms of service of the platform, but also you will most likely be in violation of national, federal, or EU legislation drafted to protect the privacy of individuals online.<\/p>\n

In this #GTMTips<\/a> post, I\u2019ll show you a way to make sure that any tags you configure this solution with will not contain strings that might be construed as PII. The tip is for Google Tag Manager<\/a>, but with very little modifications it will work with Universal Analytics, too.<\/p>\n

(UPDATE 8 September 2017:<\/strong> Check out Brian Clifton\u2019s great extension of this solution: Remove PII from Google Analytics<\/a>)<\/p>\n


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Tip 64: Remove PII from hits to Google Analytics<\/h2>\n
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The solution hinges around customTask<\/code>, which has fast become my favorite new feature in the analytics.js library. See the following articles to understand why I think so:<\/p>\n

Anyway, to make the whole thing run, create the following Custom JavaScript variable<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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function<\/span>() {\n  return<\/span> function<\/span>(model) {\n    \/\/ Add the PII patterns into this array as objects\n<\/span>    var<\/span> piiRegex = [{\n      name: 'EMAIL'<\/span>,\n      regex: \/.{4}@.{4}\/g<\/span>\n    },{\n      name: 'HETU'<\/span>,\n      regex: \/\\d{6}[A+-]\\d{3}[0-9A-FHJ-NPR-Y]\/gi<\/span>\n    }];\n    \n    var<\/span> globalSendTaskName = '_'<\/span> + model.get('trackingId'<\/span>) + '_sendHitTask'<\/span>;\n    \n    \/\/ Fetch reference to the original sendHitTask\n<\/span>    var<\/span> originalSendTask = window<\/span>[globalSendTaskName] = window<\/span>[globalSendTaskName] || model.get('sendHitTask'<\/span>);\n  \n    var<\/span> i, hitPayload, parts, val;\n    \n    \/\/ Overwrite sendHitTask with PII purger\n<\/span>    model.set('sendHitTask'<\/span>, function<\/span>(sendModel) {\n      hitPayload = sendModel.get('hitPayload'<\/span>).split('&'<\/span>);\n      for<\/span> (i = 0<\/span>; i '=');\n        \/\/ Double-decode, to account for web server encode + analytics.js encode\n<\/span>        try<\/span> {\n          val = decodeURIComponent<\/span>(decodeURIComponent<\/span>(parts[1<\/span>]));\n        } catch<\/span>(e) {\n          val = decodeURIComponent<\/span>(parts[1<\/span>]);\n        }\n        piiRegex.forEach(function<\/span>(pii) {\n          val = val.replace(pii.regex, '[REDACTED '<\/span> + pii.name + ']'<\/span>);\n        });\n        parts[1<\/span>] = encodeURIComponent<\/span>(val);\n        hitPayload[i] = parts.join('='<\/span>);\n      }\n      sendModel.set('hitPayload'<\/span>, hitPayload.join('&'<\/span>), true<\/span>);\n      originalSendTask(sendModel);\n    });\n  };\n}\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<\/div>\n
Once you add this variable to your Universal Analytics tags as the customTask<\/code> field, any hits sent by these tags will be parsed by this variable, which replaces the instances of PII with the string [REDACTED pii_type].<\/p>\n
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    \"customtask<\/p>\n
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At the beginning of the code snippet, you\u2019ll see the configuration object piiRegex<\/code>. It\u2019s an array of object literals, where each object has two properties: name<\/code> and regex<\/code>. The first is what will be used in the replace string after \u201cREDACTED\u201d. So if name<\/code> is \u201cEMAIL\u201d, you\u2019ll see \u201c[REDACTED EMAIL]\u201d in your Google Analytics reports wherever PII data was removed.<\/p>\n
The second parameter, regex<\/code>, is where you\u2019ll add the regular expression literal for whatever PII pattern you want to redact. In the example above, I have two patterns:<\/p>\n