From a tap to a record about your activity

An app can send two requests after one action. Opening an article needs a request for its text. A separate request can report that the article was opened. Only the first is needed to deliver that text.

Follow an example

Imagine a weather app where you open the radar for Utrecht. The following is an explanatory example, not a captured payload:

Action: open the radar
Event: radar_opened
Context: selected place = Utrecht, time = 08:15
Identifier: installation = example-7f3

The event says what happened. Context adds details. The identifier allows another record to be associated with this one. A sequence could show how often the same installation returns and which places it checks. Whether a service actually performs that analysis depends on its configuration and use.

How the record leaves the phone

The developer can write the sender themselves or include an SDK, a reusable software component supplied by another organisation. It can listen for screen changes or receive explicit events from the app. Some SDKs keep a local queue and send several events together later, so one network request need not mean one action.

Your action → app or SDK → local queue → collector → storage and analysis

Snowplow's architecture documents one implementation of collection and processing. Contentsquare's data collection reference shows screen and interaction events sent in batches. These explain product capabilities, not the exact configuration of every app in this project.

Who receives it?

The destination can belong to the publisher, a service provider or infrastructure used by either. A publisher-looking hostname may run tracking software; a third-party hostname may deliver a map or a consent configuration. Identify the sender, fields and purpose before drawing conclusions from its name.

What a patch can change

It can prevent a collector from starting, stop event creation, stop queue uploads, omit identifiers or block a specific web request. Hiding an on-screen element alone does not establish that these paths stopped. Read how we check, then explore your app.