How to disable Sitecore Analytics for single sessions

Geschrieben von Haiko Falk veröffentlich am 05. Jun 2018 in der Kategorie Sitecore

In general, Sitecore sets a cookie for Sitecore Analytics. The cookie is used to identify the visitor and track the visitor’s activities during the visit and when the visitor returns. With the GDPR (in German DSGVO) it seems to be necessary to agree to cookies and tracking. The difference is from now on, that an OptIn is suggested. But even an OptOut isn’t possible with Sitecore - at least not from out of the box. In this article I describe how this becomes possible.

I struggled a bit, when I got the request to combine the cookie agreement with the Sitecore Analytics. Some research lead me to an interesting idea: Adding a processor to the “<startAnalytics>” pipeline of Sitecore, right after the “CheckPreconditions” processor. Our new processor checks if the visitor accepted the cookies, otherwise the start of Analytics will be aborted.

public virtual void Process(PipelineArgs args)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull((object)args, "args");

            if (HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies[CookieAgreement] == null)
            {
                args.AbortPipeline();
            }
        }

All you must do, is add this new processor in the “<startAnalytics>” pipeline right after the “CheckPreconditions” processor like this:

You can also toggle single cookies, just add a check if the Sitecore Analytics toggle cookie is available, otherwise abort the pipeline too. Then in general cookies are enabled, because they are accepted, but the Sitecore Analytics cookie is toggled off.

Of course, the OptOut is needed too. But to delete a cookie from server-side code, you need to use a workaround I found in the msdn. Just overwrite the cookie with a new one with the same name and an expire date in the past.

if (HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies["SC_ANALYTICS_GLOBAL_COOKIE"] != null)
            {
                HttpCookie myCookie = new HttpCookie("SC_ANALYTICS_GLOBAL_COOKIE");
                myCookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1d);
                HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(myCookie);
            }

By the way, it is not possible to configure the name of the Sitecore Analytics Cookie (even in 8.2.7, I haven’t checked Sitecore 9). The name is set in the Sitecore.Analytics.Web.ContactKeyCookie.