: Avoiding Personally Identifiable Information in Custom Variables in Google Analytics We are currently logging the type of user via custom variables. The types are to do with the level of service

@Margaret670

Use a unique user identifier from your own database such as a UUID or an integer primary key. Examples of what is permitted and what isn't are documented here.

With Universal Analytics, you can now either use the new User ID feature or set a custom dimension. This example does both:

ga('create', 'UA-XXXXXX-Y', {'userId': customUserId}); // If "User ID" feature is available
ga('set', 'dimension1', customUserId); // Set a `customUserId` dimension at page level
ga('send', 'pageview');


You can of course still use custom variables if using the old Google Analytics tracking code

Once you've sent this data, you can then use the PII Viewer for Google Analytics Chrome extension to map the user ID stored in Google Analytics to locally stored personally identifiable information (PII) such as name, email address, company or zip code.

The information will be displayed in the Google Analytics interface like so:

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@Angela700

Joe rather than spend time trying to determine if what your sending to GA will violate their terms why not setup, open web analytics and track every little detail of your visitors on your own analytics system? Once you start linking visitors to any identifiable information I think it's going to violate Google's terms, if anything they would have the last say in what constitutes personal identifiable information, not anyone on this Q&A site.

Or use this service which gives you plenty if analytics on your members, who uses the system who hasn't logged in etc www.intercom.io

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