Cookie Usage

Various parts of the Ice Cream Social referral and tracking flows rely on the use of cookies. The Beta Widget employs a handful of first party cookies with the purpose of enhancing the user experience, tracking invitations, and collecting analytics used to help improve the product.

ICS cookies are prefixed with _ics_ to make them easy to identify, with the exception of the invite cookie used by our older, legacy widget.

We take privacy seriously and never sell or send cookie information to any services outside of Ice Cream Social, nor do we store any sensitive information (like passwords, emails, names, or other PII) as cookies. For more information on how we use cookies in our application, please see our Cookie & Privacy Policy.

Here is a list of the cookies set and monitored during a user’s journey, with descriptions of each:

Name	Expires	Value	Set when	Description
`invite`	30,000,000 s OR after checkout (need to verify this)	Invite String	the URL includes an `inviteId` query param the ICS script is loaded on the page	Strictly used for compatibility with V1 links generated by the legacy widget. This cookie remains for about a year after it is set or until the `addTransaction` command is fired using the V1 ICS integration. Checking out while this cookie is active allows us to credit the influencer that had sent an invite to this customer to be credited towards their reward goal.
`_ics_invite`	1 day	Invite ID	the URL includes an `inviteId` query param the URL includes a `utm_source` query param with a value of `ice_cream_social` the JSSDK is loaded on the page	Main cookie used for crediting an influencer for a conversion. This cookie is only set if the required UTM parameters are included.
`_ics_campaign`	1 day	Campaign ID	the URL includes a `utm_campaign` query param the URL includes a `utm_source` query param with a value of `ice_cream_social` the JSSDK is loaded on the page	Not actively used, but has been put in place to support future feature development This cookie is used in the event that a client has multiple campaigns configured for their site. Whatever campaign gets set here will be the “active“ campaign and all rewards will be credited towards the influencers in that campaign.
`_ics_influencer`	1 day	Influencer ID	the URL includes a `utm_medium` query param the URL includes a `utm_source` query param with a value of `ice_cream_social` the JSSDK is loaded on the page	Not actively used, but has been put in place to support future feature development. This may be used when individual influencer accounts have the ability to participate in multiple campaigns from multiple clients simultaneously, this will allow the validating of influencers before we credit them
`_ics_openedOn`	Session	Timestamp	the ICS script is loaded on the page the widget is toggled from a hidden state to visible state either automatically or by user interaction	Set for product analytics purposes. This is helpful to figure out how soon users are seeing the widget (if at all) and how long they keep it open. Additionally the timestamp may be used for debugging purposes to provide insight into a timeline of events.
`_ics_dimissedOn`	Session	Timestamp	the ICS script is loaded on the page the widget is toggled from a visible state to hidden state either automatically or by user interaction	Set for functional and analytics purposes. Tracking when the widget has been dismissed allows us to optimize when the widget is presented in effort to avoid causing unnecessary disruptions to the user while navigating a client’s site. It is also useful for determining how long a user viewed the widget before dismissing it as well as debugging purposes.