Manage third-party data sharing

Give your app users a choice about how, and when, their data is shared with third parties. Additionally, you can configure how much data is shared and with which partners, based on user preferences.

Global settings

Important:

You can't make exceptions to a global opt-out request. If Adjust receives a global opt-out request, no data is shared with SANs or partners with whom Adjust sends automated callbacks via API integration. To make exceptions, you should instead send opt-out requests for each partner individually.

In Adjust, you can disable, enable, and re-enable data sharing with third parties for statistics purposes. This lets you continue to gain valuable data insights while respecting your users’ data sharing preferences.

If a user chooses not to share their data with marketing partners, Adjust's servers will flag this. Once the flag is set, Adjust continues to record user data but the following changes are made:

  • No partner callbacks are sent for the user.
  • No data is shared with SANs for attribution.
  • The user isn't included in Audiences lists.
  • Uninstall/Reinstall is not measured for the user.

You can send Adjust a user’s decision through a server-to-server integration or directly using the Adjust SDK.

How does the enableFirstSessionDelay function help with third-party sharing?

Adjust has introduced the enableFirstSessionDelay function to help clients set up third-party sharing. This function gives you greater control over when user data is sent to Adjust servers, making it easier to manage the setup.

Important:

Third-party sharing parameters must be set before initializing the Adjust SDK. Without a delay, SDK initialization happens immediately when the app launches, which may lead to user data being processed before parameters are collected.

By using enableFirstSessionDelay, you can postpone SDK initialization, giving your app time to display a consent dialog and set all necessary third-party sharing parameters before any data is sent to Adjust. This ensures that user choices are respected from the very first session.

Any third-party sharing settings applied during the delay window will be processed before the SDK proceeds with its install session.

To set up enableFirstSessionDelay, follow the platform guide:

📖 iOS / Android / Unity / React Native / Flutter / Cordova / Cocos-2dx Corona

Partner-specific settings

When you choose data sharing options for your partner, Adjust shares each configured data point with the partner by default. This means that if you’ve chosen to send a partner data such as sessions and events, Adjust forwards these data points every time it receives them from a device.

The partner sharing settings you configure in Adjust apply globally, but you can update the sharing settings on a per-partner basis for each device. This can be useful when the data shared with a partner is contingent on the user taking specific actions in your app. You can update third-party sharing settings on the device level to:

  • Prevent Adjust from sharing all data it has been sent from a device.
  • Prevent Adjust from sharing specific data points from a device.
  • Re-enable sharing of a data point from a specific device.
  • Add granular options to the data Adjust forwards from a specific device.

You can update third-party data sharing options at any time, including before initializing the SDK. If you configure third-party data sharing settings before initializing the Adjust SDK, the settings are added to a queue. Once you initialize the SDK, the third-party data sharing updates are sent to Adjust before the session information, meaning that your updated settings apply to the install session.

This gives you full control, so you can follow user preferences while continuing to work with the tools you trust.

Examples

Here are a few example scenarios:

  • Disable all partners except one (PartnerA): Adjust will stop sharing all data with every partner except PartnerA. Only PartnerA will continue to receive user activity data.

  • Disable everything except session data: All partners will stop receiving data except for the session metric and its related activity (like installs or reattributions that fall under it).

  • Allow only session data to PartnerA: Adjust will share only session-related activity with PartnerA. No other data will be shared with any partner.

  • Disable dynamic callbacks only: You can turn off sharing specifically with dynamic partners (these are set up using dynamic callbacks). This allows you to keep other partner integrations active.
    👉 Learn more about dynamic callbacks.

Your developer team can help set these preferences in the app. Point them to the relevant platform guide:

📖 iOS / Android / Unity / React Native / Flutter / Cordova / Cocos-2dx / Corona

S2S API requirements

To integrate with the Adjust API, set up your servers to send the mandatory parameters to Adjust through an HTTP GET request at our designated endpoint URL.

See Re-enable/disable third-party sharing via S2S for instructions on how to manage third-party sharing options using the Adjust API.