prenatal.com

Context

www.prenatal.com is a chain of maternity and baby-product stores. The data controller is the Prénatal operator. The audience is expectant and young parents, which makes the subject matter sensitive: an interest in such products directly indicates pregnancy and the presence of small children. Capture: 256 requests to 34 domains, the home page, taken on a clean Edge browser with no VPN and no blocker. There is a OneTrust consent-collection platform. The technical stack is a heavy advertising set with the pixels of several social and advertising networks.

Who receives the data

Spotted here were: Meta, TikTok, Microsoft / Bing, Google, Awin. Meta receives a view event via the Facebook pixel. TikTok — via its pixel, with additional IP-address enrichment. Microsoft receives data via the Bing advertising tag, Google — via advertising tags, the Awin affiliate network tracks clicks. Additionally, the Webtrekk analytics works. This is several large advertising platforms at once, and on a maternity-products site each of them receives a signal about the user’s interest in this subject.

Was there a consent banner

Yes, the site has a OneTrust consent-collection platform, but its consent check in the session is recorded very late — at around the 25th second. By this moment the advertising and social pixels have already sent data. The policy itself classes the profiling cookies as requiring consent («authorisation is optional»). That is, the platform acknowledges that these pixels should wait for the choice — while they fire before it.

What fires before consent

Before consent is recorded, the following fire:

• the Facebook pixel — a view event to Meta;
• the TikTok pixel — an event and IP enrichment;
• the Microsoft Bing advertising tag;
• Google advertising tags;
• the Awin affiliate network;
• the Webtrekk analytics. Advertising and social pixels are non-technical purposes requiring consent. Here several of them at once send data tens of seconds before consent, and this is profiling on a sensitive subject.

Undisclosed recipients

A separate point. Of the actually working networks the policy names Facebook, Microsoft Bing, Google and Awin. But the TikTok pixel, which sends events and enriches them by IP, is not mentioned in the policy at all, nor is the Webtrekk analytics. That is, data about the visit to a maternity site goes to TikTok, while the user cannot learn of it from the document. For such subject matter, an undisclosed advertising recipient is especially weighty.

Conclusion

Prenatal.com is a heavy case, and the seriousness is heightened by the subject matter. On a maternity-and-baby-products site, several large advertising networks at once — Meta, TikTok, Microsoft, Google — receive data about the visit before consent, which is recorded only by the 25th second, while the TikTok pixel and the Webtrekk analytics are not even named in the policy. The main takeaway for the reader: an interest in maternity products is a sensitive signal, and its transmission to several advertising platforms before consent means that the profiling of expectant parents begins before any choice of theirs, and some of the recipients are not disclosed at all. It would be enough to switch all advertising and social pixels into consent-waiting mode and bring the list of recipients into line with the actual one — starting with TikTok.