Stop firing Launch tags from a domain

[m_alcantara]

A few years ago, we worked with another team within our family of companies to install Launch and Analytics for their website. A Launch property and some rules were created and data collection ran fine. That company's ownership was moved to another organization and we need to stop collecting their web data. I'm in contact with the people who I worked with when Launch and AA were originally set up. I've asked them repeatedly to remove the Launch embed code from their site, but for some reason I don't fully understand, they're struggling to do it. I still see hits in Workspace and every time I ask to remove the embed code, they say they've done it, only for me to see more hits. At this point, I'm looking for a way to forcibly stop data collection even if the embed code is not removed from parts of their site.

I thought about creating a condition in Launch rules such that if the domain is their domain, do not fire the rule. I think it might work but I want to delete their Launch property and AA report suite. If I use Launch to stop hits from their sites, I would have to keep the Launch property. Deleting it would restart data collection. Is there any other way to force data collection to stop other than them actually removing the embed code from their site?

[Harveer_SinghGi1]

Hi @m_alcantara ,

These may be helpful steps,

• Publish a new library to production environment which has logic to abort all calls, you can use either conditions in your rules like you said or use abort call method. Once published, latest changes will be pushed to the hosting location. After this you can delete or keep the property and any user requesting the Launch script will be getting served with library including abort logic in it that is now available on the hosting location. On deleting a web property, the latest built library will still remain on the hosting location.
• Other option (if applicable) is to remove the DNS record mapping incase you are using CNAME implementation for data collection tracking server. Once this mapping for Adobe is removed, any calls triggered using the CNAME shall start failing client side only.

There might be other options available through Adobe support which you can explore.

Cheers!

[bjoern__koth]

Yes, I would opt for the abort() call in the doPlugins callback.

This would surely be the least invasive

"The doPlugins variable acts as a ‘last call’ to set values in your implementation. It is the ideal place to make calls to Plug-in methods and set any desired variables before an image request is sent. If usePlugins is enabled, it automatically runs just before any type of image request is compiled and sent to Adobe"

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

If I am reading this correctly, it sounds like this org's site has an isolated Launch property? It's not tied to your sites in anyway?

Launch is the tag manager (which creates the interface and bridge to the files), the JS files are hosted on the Adobe server... you are right that deleting the property from your account probably won't fix the issue... at least not on its own. I am not sure if you can remove a file completely after its been uploaded...

However, if you were to disable ALL the rules, and all the Data Elements, and all the extensions (except maybe for "Core" which I think is needed). That should stop any an all tracking. In theory, you should then be able to delete the entire property after the file is empty of all the logic... the connection to update the file would be broken, but the file that is left on the Adobe server should be empty and no longer do anything...

Personally, I would disable everything over the abort method... in case the abort fails or is bypassed... no tracking rules at all would prevent any possible logic failures... 

Once you have confirmed that data is no longer being received after disabling everything, you should be able to safely remove the property from your Launch account. It will leave the file orphaned, but that's not a big concern really... Or you could see if Client Care can delete the file if you are concerned... 

[m_alcantara]

This sounds good and I think it will accomplish what I need to do. To summarize,

1. Create a new Launch library in Development.

2. Disable all Rules and Data Elements. I might also disable the extensions.

3. Publish the library to production.

4. Just to be absolutely sure there's no more data flowing, I'll monitor their data in Workspace. There's no immediate rush to delete their property and I can wait a week or two. Once it's confirmed, I will delete the Launch property. According to support, I can hide the Report Suite and that's fine with me.

Does this look good?

Thanks,

Michael

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Yes   You can't delete any rules, elements, extensions, etc without disabling them first.. but if you disable, then push all those changes up to prod, all the tracking logic will be gone.

IF you were planning on keeping the property, you could then delete the disabled items, but since you want it gone, I would just delete the whole Launch property once everything is confirmed.

You are also correct, you cannot delete the suite out of Adobe, but you can use the company settings to hide it completely. If any tracking calls come in (which might happen due to users viewing cache pages), the traffic will be low, but might still show up in your Server Call reports.

[m_alcantara]

Perfect. Thank you so much.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

You're very welcome. Good luck!