Consent in Unify

Segment uses Profiles in Unify as the source of truth of an end user’s consent preference when enforcing consent in Twilio Engage. To get consent preference on the Profile, Segment requires the use of the Segment Consent Preference event and Identify events to route events to Unify. The Segment Consent Preference and Identify event should include the consent object.

Segment Consent Preference event

Every time an end user provides or updates their consent preferences, Segment requires you to generate a Segment Consent Preference event. If you are using Segment’s OneTrust consent wrappers, Segment automatically generates a Segment Consent Preference event. This event is required to add the end user’s consent preference on their Profile in Unify.

For example, if an end user agreed to share their information for functional and advertising purposes but not for analytics or data sharing, the Segment Consent Preference Track call demonstrating their new consent preferences would have the following format:

{
  "anonymousId": "23adfd82-aa0f-45a7-a756-24f2a7a4c895",
  "type": "track",
  "event": "Segment Consent Preference",
  "userId": "u123",
  "traits": {
     "email": "peter@example.com",
     "phone": "555-555-5555",
  }
  "timestamp": "2023-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
  "context": {
    "consent": {
      "categoryPreferences" : {
        "Advertising": true,
        "Analytics": false,
        "Functional": true,
        "DataSharing": false
      }
    }
  }
}

If you use Protocols, the Segment app automatically adds the Segment Consent Preference event to all your existing Tracking Plans and for every new Tracking Plan. Segment recommends you don’t edit or delete the default fields in the Segment Consent Preference events, but you can add new fields as needed.

Profile-level conflicts

You might encounter a profile with a consent value of conflict if one of your end users consents to different categories on different devices or if two distinct IDs are linked to one Unify profile.

Device conflicts

A device conflict occurs when consent for one user ID is collected from two distinct devices. For example, if a user consented to all categories on their mobile phone, but consented only to essential categories on their desktop computer, their profile in Unify would have a consent value of conflict.

Device-level conflicts do not exist on the profile directly because they are always resolved by one of two strategies:

• Latest Wins: Segment sets the consent preferences to the most recent consent preferences collected from a user ID.
• Resolve False: Segment automatically sets consent to false if a consent conflict exists for a consent category.

You can select a device-level conflict resolution strategy by navigating to the $fix_this page and selecting Latest Wins or Resolve False.

Profile conflicts

A profile-level conflict occurs when two distinct IDs with different consent preferences are linked to the same Unify profile. A profile-level conflict can also occur when a userID and an anonymousID (one without a linked userID) are linked to the same profile by an external ID, like an email address or phone number, and the consent preferences of both profiles do not match.

To avoid profile conflicts, Segment recommends that you configure your profiles to avoid sharing anonymous identifiers and limit the traits collected during anonymous browsing sessions.