A Hashed Email Address Still Identifies Someone, Here Is How Ad Networks Match It

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Almost every ad network now offers a way to send customer details from a website “securely hashed”. Meta calls it advanced matching, Google calls it enhanced conversions, Pinterest calls it enhanced match. The tag runs the visitor’s email through SHA-256 and sends a 64-character string instead of the address.

That sounds like anonymisation. It isn’t, and the networks don’t claim it is. The whole point of the feature is to find the person.

Hashing on pxta.com

A Hashed Email Address Still Identifies Someone, Here Is How Ad Networks Match It