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Amplitude Device ID vs Segment Anonymous ID vs Google Client ID

  • 9 November 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 1071 views

Hey Amplitude Community,

 

I have a question.

 

Is Amplitude’s device ID just a randomly generated ID? Or is it somehow connected to the device and browser somebody is using.

 

For example I know that Google’s Client ID is based on the combination of the browser and the device, which therefore even if a user is anonymous, and cookies are expired, if the user returns on the same device, they will still have that same ID.

 

Lastly, when using Segment, is there any advantage to using the anonymousID of segment, vs the Amplitude device ID?

1 reply

Yuanyuan Zhang
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Userlevel 5
Badge +5

Hi @adeola13,

Thanks for writing this post!

Amplitude’s device ID is a device-specific identifier. For iOS, the Device ID is the identifierForVendor (IDFV). This does not persist across installs. For Android, we generate a random Device ID that gets stored locally on the phone. However, there is a flag to use the Advertising Identifier as the Device ID if you want. The Advertising Identifier does persist across installs but users have the option of changing this identifier on their devices at any time. See a detailed explanation for how the value is obtained here.

This string is stored locally in the browser's cookie or mobile device. For web-based applications, Amplitude will set the device ID to a randomly-generated UUID by default. It will persist unless a user clears their browser cookies and/ or is browsing in private mode. 

Segment’s anonymousID can be used to set Amplitude device ID when using the Segment/Amplitude integration and the it can be used for merging users: https://segment.com/docs/connections/destinations/catalog/amplitude/#prefer-anonymous-id-for-device-id. 

I cannot really say what the advantage is for using Segment anonymousID because I am not an expert in Segment’s terms. I would suggest reaching out to Segment support in case of more in-depth questions. 

I hope this helps! 

Best,

 

 

 

Yuanyuan from Amplitude

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