A remarkable situation occurred with Adobe Analytics when the system unintentionally mixed up customer reports - meaning a number of companies were looking at tracking information from other companies in their reports. Can you imagine looking at your analytics and seeing error codes that weren't even yours?
What occurred?
On September 17, 2025, Adobe made a change to improve Adobe Analytics that ended up causing a bug instead of a bonus. The upgrades that were intended to speed up the system instead created a glitch. For about one day, customer data ended up jumbled by mistake - and data from one customer was now appearing in another customer's analytics account.
Adobe explained the situation that could be blamed on a hack, but it was a simple coding error. Feeling questioned, but a glitch messed up a lot of information.
How much do you trust analytics tools? They are the "control center" of the business. Depending on something that can change based on a small amount of bad data can lead to confusion and compliance issues.
In addition, if you are like me using these tools, it's also worth asking the question: if it's possible that the data I was seeing was not even my own?
So, now I ask you, after hearing this example, would you continue to welcome all analytics reports with open arms or would you be more inclined at this point to check your data every time?
What occurred?
On September 17, 2025, Adobe made a change to improve Adobe Analytics that ended up causing a bug instead of a bonus. The upgrades that were intended to speed up the system instead created a glitch. For about one day, customer data ended up jumbled by mistake - and data from one customer was now appearing in another customer's analytics account.
Adobe explained the situation that could be blamed on a hack, but it was a simple coding error. Feeling questioned, but a glitch messed up a lot of information.
So, how much information was actually mixed up?
Adobe has asserted that around 3-5% of the data collected during the period was affected. This technical issue also propagated to other products, including:- Data Feeds & Live Streams
- Scheduled Reports
- Customer Journey Analytics & Real-Time CDP
- Adobe Journey Optimizer
What's the big deal?
Adobe claimed that the platform doesn't usually store personally identifiable information (PII). However, the experts told that not every company is as careful. So, in these types of things, there might be leaks of:- Email address
- Search history
- Session IDs or other tracking tokens
How much do you trust analytics tools? They are the "control center" of the business. Depending on something that can change based on a small amount of bad data can lead to confusion and compliance issues.
What does Adobe want its customers to do?
Adobe recommended affected customers to:- Delete all data captured during the window of September 17 and September 18.
- Delete it from not just the live system but also backups and exports.
In conclusion
To their credit, Adobe responded to the bug rapidly with a reasonable course of action. One point made clear in this example is the fact that bugs can often be just as dangerous as hackers.In addition, if you are like me using these tools, it's also worth asking the question: if it's possible that the data I was seeing was not even my own?
So, now I ask you, after hearing this example, would you continue to welcome all analytics reports with open arms or would you be more inclined at this point to check your data every time?
