title: Tracker Categories subtitle: Definitions for different types of trackers author: privacy team type: primer publish: True date: 2017-07-22 tags: primer, categories header_img: blog/blog-tracker-categories.jpg +++
Trackers differ both in the technologies they use, and the purpose they serve. Based on the the service they provide to the site owner, we have categorized the trackers in the following:
Advertising : Provides advertising or advertising-related services such as data collection, behavioral analysis or re-targeting.
Comments : Enables comments sections for articles and product reviews
Customer Interaction : Includes chat, email messaging, customer support, and other interaction tools
Essential : Includes tag managers, privacy notices, and technologies that are critical to the functionality of a website
Adult Advertising : Delivers advertisements that generally appear on sites with adult content
Site Analytics : Collects and analyzes data related to site usage and performance.
Social Media : Integrates features related to social media sites
Audio Video Player : Enables websites to publish, distribute, and optimize video and audio content
CDN (Content Delivery Network) : Content delivery network that delivers resources for different site utilities and usually for many different customers.
Misc (Miscellaneous) : This tracker does not fit in other categories.
Hosting : This is a service used by the content provider or site owner
Unknown : This tracker has either not been labelled yet, or we do not have enough information to label it.