How can a contacts identity transfer?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Hoping someone can help.  Have two instances where the wrong activity log is populating with someone else's activity.

In one example I have a colleague on holiday with no online access but their activity log is populating with web views and interesting moments.

How can this transfer to someone else, essentially tracking the wrong persons activity in the wrong contact record?

And how would I know how many contacts are recording the wrong information.

Any ideas.

thanks

Mark

[Anonymous]

This could only happen if the cookie is being tracked.  So either someone is using that persons computer, or your user who is on vacation is using another cookied device.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the inputs, I'm almost 100% certain that my colleague is not on another device and his work PC is not in use. He is at Disneyland at the moment.  But I will confirm this on his return.

The only other explanation I can think of is if he has filled out a form on another colleagues PC with his own details.

Either that or something very odd is happening.

It seems and I hope is only happening with Internal company contacts.  Im wondering as we send our weekly internal news letter via marketo if this is somehow causing tracking confusion.  But I dont know why that would be.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Without exception, the direct cause of such incidents is that the Munchkin session has been associated with the lead in question.

This can happen because a lead forwarded a personalized link (either the tracking server link or a mkt_tok-enized target link), because a lead filled out a form with another address (as you suggested), or because code used for programmatic association (using Munchkin associateLead or one of the server API methods) is broken.  I've even seen it happen because somebody re-embedded one lead's personalized link in a subsequent mass email. But you don't need to worry that leads are getting randomly mixed up by Marketo, not in my long history of investigating such things.  There is always a mistake being made somewhere else.

[Anonymous]

This system has so many things to consider.  I agree there is a few ways this can occur.

The question is once this incorrect association has occurred how does it get corrected?

Thank you for the extra confidence in the system. These issues always make me question the consistency and accuracy of the system, which we have no choice but to assume is correct.

thanks for all the help and suggestions.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The question is once this incorrect association has occurred how does it get corrected?

The brute-force way is to clear all cookies (or just the Marketo mkto_trk if you want) from the affected browser. This will leave the previous activity log linked to the wrong lead, but it will stop it going forward. 

The more delicate way is to re-submit a form or otherwise re-associate the cookie with the correct human, then delete the cookie and let a new one get created.