Data Privacy for Individuals
Protecting the privacy of smartphone users means protecting the privacy of all of us: Families, friends and colleagues.
How we protect your privacy
Crowd Statistics:
Businesses only receive crowd-level statistics from us, e.g., 300,000 people visited this supermarket last month. If a place is rarely visited, we do not provide statistics for it.
Anonymous Insights:
By aggregating personal data to business insights, we ensure that individuals cannot be identified, even if a business combines our data insights with other data.
App Permissions:
Data will only be shared with us if you give your consent when you first open the app. As an official iAb vendor, PlaceSense values your right to choose who has access to your data and who doesn't. You can change permissions any time.
Device Level:
Data we receive is associated only with your device ID, meaning we do not know your name, phone number or email. We have to collect the device ID in case a device owner wants to verify that we store data of this device.
Your privacy questions answered
We believe that privacy is not only about protecting people’s data, but also about transparent communication. Thus, we want you to know:
Where do we get location data from?
We receive location data from partner companies, which themselves receive the data from apps installed on mobile phones.
Apps share location signals based on your privacy and consent settings, your app usage and other factors. This information is shared together with a unique device identifier. We do not know your name and we do not want to collect more information on you than absolutely necessary for our businesses purposes.
Why do we use location data?
Anonymized location data help companies make smarter decisions, whether it is building new supermarkets where people need them most or offering sustainable mobility solutions in areas with high congestion.
For years, eCommerce websites use so-called “cookies” to understand everything about website visitors. In the non-digital world, companies with physical stores don’t have these capabilities. Our aim is to protect the privacy of individuals while fulfilling the need for consumer insights in the physical world.
Do we use location data to target individuals with personal advertisement?
No. We have no interest in individualized advertising and we do not sell any information about you as an individual. We only help companies better understand groups of people without showing them ads on their smartphones.
How do they make money? Asking yourself this question is the safest way to understand if a company has an interest in protecting your data. PlaceSense makes money by helping businesses like supermarkets, malls or restaurant to make smarter decisions based on crowd behavior. We have no interest in understanding you as an individual. However, we do have an interest in identifying what groups of people visit certain locations. Groups, segments or clusters are determined based on similar demographics, behaviors or interests. None of this grouped information can be tracked back to any individuals, even if the data was in any way exposed.
How can you prevent sharing your data with PlaceSense or other third parties?
When you first open an app, you will be prompted with a request to agree or disagree to the use of your location by the app. Please note that the app will only request this information when it uses your location. Apps that don't use your location, will not ask for your permission. The simplest way to avoid that data is shared with PlaceSense or any other company, is to disagree to this request.
If you have already been using an app, there is fortunately also another way to check whether your location is being collected by an app on your smartphone and to disagree to this practice. To do so, please go to the privacy menu in your smartphone settings. Here you can see which apps you share e.g. your location information with. You can simply deactivate data sharing with apps that you think do not need access to your information. As a European resident, you also have a couple of privacy rights. You can e.g. reach out to us (or any other company) and – request to inform you if we collected information from your smartphone in the past – request to delete data concerning you – request to access data concerning you – request to transfer data concerning you to another digital system of you choice – request to correct data concerning you if you suspect that we stored false information on you – request to not collect data concerning you any longer – request to pause the data collection on you – request to make decisions manually rather than by automated means To fulfill any request, we need your unique identifier. This is a short overview, you can find more answers on privacy questions in our privacy notice. Also, feel free to reach out to us via: [email protected] for any questions or requests.
Your question was not answered?
Feel free to take a look at this privacy Q&A (called privacy notice) or contact us.