Facebook - PIXEL Potentially violating personal data details??

[J55ni]

Getting the below error on facebook from the PIXEL ;

Potential violation details

We detected Credit card data that appeared as variant coming from your PageView events in the URL query parameter.

Any idea on how to resolve this?

Thank you.

[Moira]

Hey @J55ni,

I'll be happy to help you out with this.

I have come across this error a few times and found a workaround if you happen to be using a Shopify-developed theme. This URL Parameter Query is a standard query used in many apps or features within Shopify. Our technical team has previously confirmed that the 'You may also like' product feature has an impact on the parameter. By simply turning off this feature should fix this error. It seems Facebook recently made some updates and included these parameters as unacceptable. Please follow the steps below to remove the feature:

• From your Shopify admin, head to Themes > locate the theme you wish to edit.

• Click Customize > select Products from the drop-down menu > click Product Recommendations and untick 'Show dynamic recommendations' then click 'Save':

If you find that the steps above make no difference, you may need to talk to Facebook. I've outlined below how you can contact them.

Merchants with an already existing Business Page on Facebook will be able to access the live chat service. (There have been some cases of live chat not functioning for all business pages, to resolve this, you may need to reach out to Facebook through email by filling out a form found through Facebook's Help Center.)

You can access the live chat service by visiting this link while logged into your Facebook Business Manager account.

• To start, click on the "Find answers or contact support" button:

• Like Shopify support, you will have to fill out the prompts for your specific questions and then click on "chat with a representative" if the documents are unhelpful or you wish to have live support:

• Facebook Live Chat is available to merchants between 9 AM EST - 11 PM EST. You will not be able to access this support channel outside of these hours and will be prompted to get in touch with Support via email. Facebook does also shut off its chat feature when the capacity is too high, so the chat may appear unavailable at any time. You will see the following message and will have to try again later:

• As an alternative, you can also fill out a support form here. You must be logged into Facebook for this link to work.

If they're unable to assist, our live support might also be able to help. While we’re not able to provide account-specific support via the Shopify Community at this time, we’d be happy to continue assisting you through live chat, email, or callback. Please visit https://bit.ly/3cJkx8V and log in to your account to create a support request.

If you have any questions please feel free to thread those below!

[J55ni]

The above didn't fix it and facebook has been useless, Any other ideas on how to solve this issue??

[Moira]

@J55ni,

According to Facebook's documentation, this error appears if potentially violating personal data has been detected.

"This data doesn’t comply with Facebook’s terms and policies. To help protect Facebook users' privacy, this information was blocked and you will not be able to view or use it. This issue may impact the performance of any ads optimizing on affected events, including those used in Custom Audiences or custom conversions."

Review the details in the diagnostic and determine if any potentially violating personal data is being sent. You’ll need to remove any personal data being sent to Facebook in order to resolve this problem. Learn more about personally identifiable information below:

• About Personally Identifiable Information (Contact Information) | Facebook Business Help Center

Examples of Contact Information not approved for sharing (including, but not limited to):

• Social Security number (or local equivalent)

• Password

• GPS (For example, latitude and longitude coordinates)

• Credit card

• Access token

• IBAN / Bank routing number

• Blood type

Which Data-Sharing level do you have your Facebook Pixel set to? The Data sharing settings in your Facebook channel lets you choose how customer data and browsing behavior is collected in your online store which will have an impact on your PageView events.

Depending on when you installed the Facebook sales channel, the customer data-sharing levels offer different privacy settings. You can read the help guide below for more information on how to detect your sharing level and make any adjustments:

• Facebook data sharing · Shopify Help Center

[simone83]

@J55ni @Moira 

The problem are Shopify's variant ids which sometimes look like credit card numbers. Credit cards like Visa, Mastercard, etc have a specific number scheme which indicate what credit card type it is and which issuer issued the card. Visa cards usually start with a 4 and have 13 numbers in length. For Mastercard it's either 2221-2720 or 54-55. And so on.

You can read more about this number format here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_card_number

That means if some of your variant ids fit in these credit card number schemes then Facebook will recognizes them as credit cards numbers and blocks these requests from tracking.

There is no real solution for this problem. Facebook won't change that because they are responsible for not processing credit card numbers in that way. And if Shopify doesn't change their variant id number scheme, for example makes them longer, shorter than 13-16 chars or uses alphanumeric values (a-z, 0-9), then you will always see these errors in your FB pixel event details.

[Moira]

Thank you @J55ni for providing us additional context around this issue! I will certainly pass this info on to our technical team regarding the variant id number scheme.