# User profiles

Get visibility into the visitors of your applications.

The **user profiles** feature displays a list of users who browse your applications, along with each user's detailed profile, [sessions](/explanation/application/sessions), and events timeline.

This view helps you understand an individual visitor's journey over time. You can see the pages they browsed, the elements they interacted with, whether they completed goals, and how their behavior evolved across sessions.

The list also shows **live visitors** in real time as new events come in:

![User profile list](/assets/explanation/user-profiles/user-profile-list.png)

A [session](/explanation/application/sessions) stays marked as live for up to 10 minutes after its most recent event.

## Identification

Users can be classified as **anonymous** or **identified**.

![Profile types](/assets/explanation/user-profiles/profile-types.png)

An anonymous user is a visitor whose identity has not been shared with the platform. Your application can identify a user, typically after they log in or sign up. From that point on, their activity is associated with the identified profile until your application anonymizes them.

> **Tracking required**
>
> All users are anonymous by default. To identify or anonymize a user, track [user account events](/reference/event/types/user-account) or call the SDK's `identify` or `anonymize` methods.

When your application identifies a user, the data collected on the anonymous profile is merged into the identified one. This preserves continuity, connecting activity from before identification with behavior afterward.

![Anonymous to identified user](/assets/explanation/user-profiles/anonymous-to-identified-user.png)

After they log out, they return to their previous anonymous profile. The reverse merge does not happen: data tracked while the user is identified stays out of the anonymous profile, protecting their sensitive information.

![Identified to anonymous user](/assets/explanation/user-profiles/identified-to-anonymous-user.png)

To preserve this privacy boundary, anonymous and identified profiles of the same person are counted as two different users.

## User tags

Throughout the UI, both in the list and inside individual profiles, tags give you a quick read on each user.

Some tags rely on anonymous information and are available without any setup. Others depend on events you must track first. See the [attributes list](/reference/user/standard-attributes) for which events to track.

In the table below, marks tags that require event tracking, and marks tags available only for identified users.

| User tag            |                                                              | Description                                                |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| `New user`          |                                                              | A user who has only one session.                           |
| `Returning user`    |                                                              | A user who has more than one session.                      |
| `Longtime user`     |                                                              | A user whose first visit occurred more than 60 days ago.   |
| `Work info`         | *Integration required. Available for identified users only.* | A user with known work information, such as company name.  |
| `Contact info`      | *Integration required. Available for identified users only.* | A user with known contact details, such as email or phone. |
| `Buyer`             | *Integration required.*                                      | A user who has placed at least one order.                  |
| `Custom attributes` | *Integration required.*                                      | A user with at least one custom attribute.                 |

## Explore

- [Audiences](/explanation/audience): Understand how to deliver content to specific groups of users.
- [CQL](/reference/cql/syntax): Get the basics on how to write conditions to define audiences.