Anonymous Profile
Beginner PronunciationEN/əˈnɑːnɪməs ˈproʊfaɪl/
An anonymous profile is the record an analytics tool keeps for a visitor who has not been identified, keyed by a generated identifier rather than a real account.
The record is created on the first visit and from then on accumulates behaviour and inferred attributes such as device, arrival channel and landing page under that one key. Its scope is the browser, so clearing storage, using a private window or switching device creates a fresh profile and orphans the old one permanently. The common misreading is to equate the count of anonymous profiles with a count of people; the figure is always larger than the real population. Until an identity is attached, an anonymous profile is not a person but a behavioural context.