Is your data private? If you’re a regular online user, you’ve probably experienced that creepy experience of seeing a private preference expressed in advertising that “follows” you across many websites and tracks your behavior to predict shopping habits. One of the most famous examples is “early pregnancy detection.”

Targeted advertising works like this: a small piece of information, (such as a preference for hot dogs), has been married to your name, your location and your browsing history. Then whenever you are near a small business that has hot dogs for sale, you’ll receive advertising specific to that preference and location. This has been nirvana for hot dog vendors. And for tech companies. In fact, Google and Facebook made their initial billions from planting small bits of code (“cookies”) on websites and gathering information on users based on that clandestine data collection strategy. Information targeting is today worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Download our white paper on data privacy which provides an overview of this technology, as well as some tips on how small retailers can deliver the privacy-protecting experiences that help your customers.