Piggyback detection
A 3rd-party script you load can add further 3rd-parties without you realizing. Tagmaps captures the full loading hierarchy and shows you the initiator chains.
You approved one tag, not the ten it brought with it
Piggybacking happens when a tag on your site loads another tag, which loads another, and so on. You added the first one, but everything it piggybacked is unknown to you, and may not show up in your privacy notice.
To identify piggybacking, you need to load the page, and inspect what happens. This is what Tagmaps does, showing you very clearly what you added to the page, versus what 3rd-parties added - and how it's changed over time.
Why piggybacking is important to diagnose
3rd-parties you don't have a relationship with
A piggybacked 3rd-party might have never been reviewed or approved. You may not have a data processing agreement. But they're on your site and capturing data anyway.
A consent propagation challenge
It's critical to check if piggybacked tags are respecting the consent choices of your visitors, no matter how they were added to your site.
Data transfers to other companies
Each piggybacked tag can read and write data, such as cookies. Personal data of your website visitors could be being transferred to 3rd-parties.
Impacts on site performance
The more resources that load on your site, the worse it can perform. Identifying piggybacking could be crucial to addressing your performance challenges.
How Tagmaps detects piggybacking
To detect piggybacking, you need to know how exactly how each resource on your website was loaded.
1. Record every request
Tagmaps captures every network request from your site, not only the scripts you directly added to the HTML.
2. Track what loaded what
For each request, Tagmaps records the script that initiated it so the loading hierarchy is understood across each page.
3. Mapping the network requests
Tagmaps presents all of the relationships in the initiator map, clearly showing how each resource was loaded, and how far down the hierarchy it is from the page.
4. Show you the initiator chains
You see how every resource loads, clearly showing which tags you added to your site, and which were piggybacked.
Piggybacking FAQs
What is piggybacking?
Piggybacking is when a tag you added to your site loads additional tags of it's own, often from 3rd-parties. Those scripts can then load even more in turn, and on and on.
Why is piggybacking a problem?
Piggybacking isn't always a problem, and is often useful. But, the risk is when unknown 3rd-parties load resources on your site, and have the ability to read and write data such as cookies to a user's device.
How does Tagmaps detect piggybacking?
By tracking how each and every tag on your site loads, we can form a hierarchy that tracks which tags were added by you, and which were piggybacked.
Can I tell which of my own tags is responsible?
Yes. Using the visual map in Tagmaps, simply trace the route back up the hierarchy to find what initiated each request.