VK

Overview

VK (VKontakte) is a Russian social network with over 100 million monthly active users, primarily in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the broader CIS region. VK operates one of Eastern Europe's largest digital advertising platforms and provides social sharing widgets and embedded media players for external websites. When VK scripts appear on a website, they serve two distinct purposes: functional social sharing/embedding components, and the VK Advertising pixel for behavioral retargeting on VK's ad network.

What This Script Does

VK scripts appear on third-party sites in several forms:

Social widgets (functional):

• The VK Share button (vk.com/js/api/share.js) loads a social sharing widget that allows visitors to share page content to their VK profile or send it to VK contacts
• VK Video embed player loads video content hosted on VK's platform within an iframe on the host page
• The VK Group widget embeds a mini social feed from a VK community page, showing recent posts and follower counts

VK Advertising pixel (marketing):

• The VK Pixel (vk.com/js/api/openapi.js initialized with a pixel ID, or a 1x1 beacon to vk.com/rtrg) fires on advertiser sites to track page views and conversion events
• Sets the remixlang and remixsid cookies (third-party, persistent) on the vk.com domain for VK users — correlating visits to sites running the pixel with VK user profiles
• Sets _ym_uid (100-day expiry) and similar persistent identifiers on the advertiser's domain for VK Pixel attribution
• Transmits conversion events (page views, product views, purchases) to VK's advertising servers for campaign attribution and audience building
• Enables retargeting: advertisers can create custom audiences from pixel-tracked visitors and show them VK ads

Data collection per interaction:

• Page view: URL, referrer, VK user identifier (if the visitor is logged into VK), timestamp
• Conversion event: event type, conversion value, product IDs, transaction ID
• All data routes through VK's servers in Russia under Russian data localization requirements

Consent & Compliance

• Category: Marketing (pixel) / Functional (widgets)
• GDPR: VK's advertising pixel requires explicit consent — it sets persistent third-party cookies and transmits behavioral data to VK's servers. VK is a Russian entity; data transfers to Russia have no EU adequacy decision and rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or binding corporate rules, which face heightened scrutiny under GDPR's international transfer requirements. Social widgets also load third-party resources from VK's servers, which may reveal the visitor's IP address and visit to VK even without user interaction.
• ePrivacy: The VK Pixel and its associated cookies require prior consent. Social sharing widgets set cookies that may persist beyond the session.
• CCPA: VK's pixel data sharing constitutes "sharing" personal information with a foreign third party for advertising.
• Russian data localization: VK operates under Russian Federal Law No. 149-FZ requiring personal data of Russian citizens to be stored on servers located in Russia. Organizations in Western jurisdictions should consider the regulatory environment when evaluating VK integrations.

Should You Block This Without Consent?

Conditional. The VK Advertising pixel must be blocked without explicit marketing consent. Social sharing widgets are functional but still load third-party resources from VK's servers — consider whether the data transfer to Russian infrastructure is acceptable under your privacy policy before treating these as consent-exempt functional elements.