Personal links: privacy and what Darwin stores

Personal links work the same way in every workspace, so there are no link settings to switch. This guide covers what happens when someone opens one, what Darwin keeps about them, and how each teammate stops the link emails.

What is always on

• Greeting the person. A link with a greeting greets them by name. A link without one, or with a greeting saved as a draft, opens the page with its usual opening message, and the agent still knows who arrived.
• Saving them as a contact and filling in the booking form, when the link carries their details.
• The team email when someone opens their link, once per person per link each day. See Results and follow-up.

What Darwin stores

For each visit from a personal link, Darwin keeps the link and the greeting shown, the page it opened, the details the link carried (email, first and last name, company and job title) and when it happened. Opening the same link again in the same browser within 12 hours counts as the same visit.

If the link carries an email address, Darwin saves the person as a contact, or updates the one you have, like a form submission. When you erase a person by email, their link visits are erased too, and an export includes them.

What Darwin removes from the address

As soon as the chat loads, Darwin takes the link's own parameters (dw, dw_email, dw_first, dw_last, dw_company, dw_title) out of the address bar, so they don't stay in the visitor's history or travel on to other sites. UTM tags, gclid, your other parameters and #anchors stay as they were, so your analytics and forms keep their campaign tracking.

The darwin_vid cookie

The chat keeps a first-party cookie, darwin_vid, on your own domain. It holds the same visitor ID the chat already keeps in the browser, so www.example.com and example.com count as one visitor.

Good to know

• If your email tool couldn't fill in a detail and the link arrives with something like {{firstName}}, Darwin ignores it and uses your fallback words.
• If someone opens a link you've since deleted, the chat greets them with the first greeting in use on your Greetings list. With none, they see your page's usual opening message.
• Visits from your team and test browsers aren't counted in a link's results.