Ads and cookies

When we run ads on Google, the echo-group.ca website may load the Google Ads tag (the "Google tag", gtag.js) to measure how well our ads work: to know whether a click on one of them was followed by a click on a sign-up button of the website ("Get Started", "Choose …"). That is its only purpose here.

• No targeted advertising and no remarketing based on your visits: the tag is set to refuse ad personalization (ad_personalization).
• No audience measurement: analytics is refused (analytics_storage).
• No user ID and no email address, not even hashed (ad_user_data refused, no "enhanced conversions"). What Google still receives is in section 3.

These settings are those of Google's consent mode (Google's documentation).

Today, the tag is not active on this website: it loads for no one.

The tag loads only if the address through which you arrive on echo-group.ca carries a click identifier added by Google (gclid, gbraid or wbraid). That is the case when you click one of our Google ads. It is also the case if you follow a link copied from such an address, for example shared by someone who came through an ad: nothing lets the website tell the two apart. To share a page of the website without that identifier, remove from its address the part that starts with ?gclid=.

It then loads on the other pages of the website, during that visit or a later one, for at most 30 days after your last arrival through an ad: as long as the cookies that keep a trace of it last, without being extended at each page view (section 4).

It never loads:

• for a visitor who arrived through an address without a click identifier, and followed none in the previous 30 days;
• if your browser sends the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal;
• if you refused it on this page;
• if your browser refuses cookies: we could not keep a refusal there;
• in the Echo Support dashboard (app.echo-group.ca), or in the chat widget, whether on our website or on our customers' websites.

Our server also checks the arrival through an ad, the refusal and the GPC signal: for a visitor who did not come through an ad, who refused the tag or whose browser sends that signal, the security policy it sends forbids any connection to Google's domains, and the browser would block the tag.

The tag loads after the page is displayed, without asking for your agreement first: the website shows no consent banner. You can refuse it at any time, at the top of this page.

When the tag is loaded, your browser sends Google:

• the identifier of the ad click (gclid, gbraid or wbraid);
• your IP address;
• the address of the echo-group.ca pages you view while the tag is active, and the time of each visit;
• the conversion: the fact that you clicked a sign-up button;
• the technical information every browser attaches to its requests (type, version, language);
• the identifiers carried by the tag's _gcl_ cookies on echo-group.ca (section 4);
• the cookies Google may have set earlier in your browser on its own domains (google.com, doubleclick.net), if your browser sends them.

These identifiers let Google link the visit to what it already knows about your browser. Google receives from us neither your name, nor your email address, nor what you write in the chat, nor anything you do in the dashboard. Creating your account, on app.echo-group.ca, is not measured by this tag: only the click that leads there is.

Google processes this information under its own rules and may also use it for its own purposes, for example to measure ad effectiveness or to fight fraud (how Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services).

• _gcl_au, _gcl_aw, and the other cookies whose name starts with _gcl_: set on echo-group.ca by Google's tag, to link an ad click to the sign-up click. Our tag asks for a duration of 30 days, without extending them at each page view (Google's cookie settings); Google states 90 days for these cookies (list of Google's advertising cookies).
• echo_pub_annonce: set by us each time you arrive through an ad, value "1", 30 days. It only says that this browser came through an ad.
• echo_pub_refus, and its copy echo-pub-refus in the browser's local storage: set by us if you refuse the tag, however you arrived, value "1". Our server sets the cookie for one year, and extends it by one year at each page of the website you open. The copy has no expiry, but some browsers erase it on their own: Safari erases a website's local storage after 7 days without interaction with it (WebKit documentation). The cookie, set by the server, has no such limit.
• On its own domains, Google may read or set its advertising cookies, for example GCL_AW_P (90 days, on googleadservices.com, doubleclick.net and google.com, according to the same list).

Our server reads echo_pub_annonce, echo_pub_refus and _gcl_aw to allow the tag only in the cases of section 2. It ignores _gcl_au, which the tag may create again during a visit that does not come from an ad. It does not record them in its logs. The arrival address, click identifier included, is however recorded like any requested address in the server's technical logs, as is the refusal request made by the button on this page (privacy policy, section 2).

Google LLC is based in the United States. Google states that it maintains servers in different countries: this information may be processed outside Quebec and Canada, and is then subject to the laws of those countries (Google's privacy policy, "Data transfers" section).

For how long: Google states that it anonymizes advertising data in server logs by removing part of the IP address after 9 months and cookie information after 18 months (how Google retains data it collects, read on October 2, 2026). The rest follows Google's retention rules.

Three ways, as you prefer:

• The button at the top of this page. It saves your refusal in this browser (a cookie that our server sets and extends, and its copy in local storage, section 4), erases our echo_pub_annonce cookie and the _gcl_ cookies set on echo-group.ca, and, if the tag is already running on the open page, withdraws all its permissions. Our server, which reads this refusal, no longer allows the tag in this browser.
• Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends this signal (GPC specification), the tag never loads, with nothing more to do.
• Your browser settings: block all cookies for echo-group.ca. The tag then does not load, since the website could not keep a refusal there (section 2).

Two settings are not enough. Blocking third-party cookies does not stop the tag from loading: its cookies are set on echo-group.ca itself, and this only stops Google from reading or setting its own on its own domains. Clearing the website's data removes the tag's cookies, but also your refusal: the tag would come back at your next arrival through an ad.

What refusing cannot do: erase the cookies Google set on its own domains (do it in your browser settings), or what Google has already received (see Google's tools, for example My Ad Center). The refusal applies to this browser only: on another device, or after clearing the website's data, it must be made again.

Any question: vie-privee@echo-group.ca. Our privacy policy describes everything we collect; its section 8 sums up this page.