Not sure that the security concern cited by Marketo support as the reason this doesn't work, is valid...This should absolutely be a core, supported feature.
Completely agreed. Auto population is not a security concern when you're implementing on your own site - which I believe most would do. And the ability to turn it off can always be an option built into the form. Quite frankly I think it was incredibly short sighted to release PP in forms 2.0 and not prefill without surveying users/customers first - this is clearly a must have feature that I think was a no-brainer missed opportunity when 2.0 was being developed.
Prefill on forms embedded on an external site is not allowed generally as a security measure. You can get around it, and the developer's blog article here shows how to manually do this: http://developers.marketo.com/blog/external-page-prefill/ I can't speak for the Product team, but I doubt this functionality will be enabled by default. Progressive profiling will work, but prefill will not unless you manually enable it with the steps in that blog article
But the technique in that blog post creates a DoS vulnerability for your Marketo instance. A company with an understanding of risk -- if not security per se -- should reject that option out of hand. You'd be ignoring the security concern and allowing malicious users to break your other integrations.
There is a method of doing this securely and scalably, with opt-in from both sides (consumer/3rd-party website and producer/Marketo customer). I've haven't officially published it (though I've worked with it at some clients) but the more I see the API method mentioned the more I worry about what people are getting themselves into.
You make an excellent point about the security concerns. These are the same security concerns I was referring to in my earlier comment about why the Product team hasn't made this functionality available by default. It can be done. But it's a trade off and takes custom code. If you have another option you're developing that eliminates the security issue, I would love to hear it! I'm sure that a lot of folks would be happy to have another option.
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