Identity Recovery

Recognizing a returning visitor isn't always straightforward. Visitors switch between apps, embedded browsers don't share state with the default browser on the same device, and people use multiple browsers on the same phone.

Ours Privacy helps by letting you use a custom domain so your tracking is first-party to your site. That covers the majority of cases. Identity Recovery is an additional layer for the situations where a returning visitor still can't be recognized.

Identity Recovery is an opt-in feature that fills those gaps. When a returning visitor can't be recognized through normal means, Ours Privacy checks whether they were seen recently and, if so, restores their original visitor ID automatically. If no match is found, a new ID is assigned as usual.

A common example: a visitor taps a link inside Instagram, browses your site in Instagram's built-in browser, then later opens Safari to make a purchase. Without Identity Recovery those look like two separate visitors. With it enabled, Ours Privacy connects the sessions so your analytics and destinations see one continuous journey.

Identity Recovery is available on all plans and is disabled by default.

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Enabling Identity Recovery

Identity Recovery is opt-in per source. Open your source settings and toggle Identity Recovery on. That's it. The defaults work well for most sites.

Once enabled, you can optionally adjust the match window and network threshold described below.

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Configuration Options

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How Matching Works

When a returning visitor can't be recognized, Ours Privacy looks at recent activity from similar visitors. If there's a clear match, the original visitor ID is restored. If the situation is ambiguous, matching is skipped and a new ID is assigned instead.

This works across source types. A visitor browsing your site generates web SDK events, and when they later submit a form that triggers a webhook or an API call, Identity Recovery can link those events back to the same visitor.

Identity Recovery only runs after deterministic methods (login identity, external IDs, email) have been checked. It's a backstop, not a replacement for proper visitor identification.

Shared networks like hospital lobbies and corporate offices have many people behind the same IP. When the system detects too many distinct visitors on the same network, it skips matching entirely rather than guess wrong. VPN users whose IP changes every session also get a clean new ID. These are the right outcomes.

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Measuring Impact

When Identity Recovery reconnects a visitor, it powers the Identity Report dashboard, where you can see:

• Recovery count: how many visitors were reconnected in a given period
• Recovery rate: the percentage of visitors recovered out of all unique visitors
• Trend over time: whether recovery is increasing or decreasing period-over-period

Use the Identity Report to understand how interrupted sessions affect your data and whether adjusting your match window or network threshold would help.

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Privacy

• Signals used for matching are short-lived and are never stored in a way that can identify an individual.
• Recovery is scoped to your account. There is no cross-account linking.
• Matching works across sources within the same account. A visitor seen on a web source can be recovered when they later trigger events through a webhook or API source.
• If Exclude Request Context is enabled on a source, Identity Recovery is automatically disabled for that source.

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When It Works Best

• Visitors return on the same device and network within the match window
• Your audience browses on mobile, where identity gaps are most common
• Visitors move between embedded browsers (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook) and their default browser (Safari, Chrome) on the same device
• You use a web source with a custom domain for first-party tracking, and Identity Recovery catches the edge cases

It won't recover visitors who return from a different device, switch networks, or come back after the match window has expired.

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Best Practices

• Start with defaults. A 60-minute window and a max of 3 visitors per network is a conservative starting point.
• Check the Identity Report. Monitor your recovery rate over time and adjust settings if needed.
• Pair with deterministic identity. Calling identify when a visitor logs in is always the most reliable approach. Identity Recovery complements it for anonymous sessions.