[Bug] Visitor showing as "returning" but visitor profile only contains 1 visit

[peterbo]

What happened?

Visitor showing as "returning" but visitor profile only contains 1 visit. Happens multiple times (not only a glitch with 1 session)

What should happen?

For visitors marked as "returning", at least 2 visits should be in the visitor profile

How can this be reproduced?

I can't open the visitor log on demo. Will try to reproduce elsewhere

Matomo version

5.1

PHP version

8.3

Server operating system

Debian 11

What browsers are you seeing the problem on?

Not applicable (e.g. an API call etc.)

Computer operating system

No response

Relevant log output

No response

Validations

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• Follow our Security Policy.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that reports the same bug to avoid creating duplicates.
• The provided steps to reproduce is a minimal reproducible of the Bug.

[michalkleiner]

This can happen if the previous visit is removed e.g. using the GDPR tools or some other way. The visit marked as returning will stay marked as returning even when the original first visit is removed (for whatever reason).

[peterbo]

Raw data deletion is set to > 1000 days and no GDPR tools deletion is used. Can there be any other case? We're using "fingerprint lookback window (14000 seconds) > session active window (1800 seconds)" recognition. A lot of fresh sessions are showing the "returning" symbol but only consist of one visit.

[sgiehl]

Hey @peterbo. When you hover the returning visitor icon, there should be a tooltip showing how many visits the visitor had. Does that one also show 1 visit?

[peterbo]

Hi @sgiehl the icon tooltip shows 2 visits

[sgiehl]

Ok. But that means it at least found a previous visit when creating that visit 🤔
Are you able to find two visits for the same visitor id in the database?
Wondering if there might be some weird reason for the visitorid to be changed, even though it should reuse the same from the previous visit...

[peterbo]

Hi @sgiehl
I can find other visits for the (potentially) same visitor:

config_id & IP is the same, but the visitor_id has changed. Both visitor profiles only show 1 visit.