How does Placer.ai preserve individual privacy when showing visitor journeys to a specific location?

Placer.ai is committed to protecting the privacy of individuals, and therefore personally identifiable information (PII) for an individual is not shown in the data. There is no tracking of a single person to, from, or at a location. Ever. The data we receive from our partners is already stripped of personnel identifiers such as MAIDs before it is shared with us

Placer.ai preserves individual privacy and displays graphs, heat maps, numbers, and statistical data about locations while preserving its actionable characteristics. Placer.ai does not provide personal data.

Additionally, Placer.ai does not surface data for locations with fewer than 50 unique devices, including segments of visitor journeys to POIs. Although this may slightly impact the data, it ensures the privacy of individuals in less populated areas.

Where does Placer.ai source its data?

Placer.ai does not collect location data directly from consumers. Instead, this data is obtained from hundreds of partner mobile applications that collect data from mobile devices. We partner with a wide range of companies who have apps across various different categories (i.e., coupons, travel, games, etc.), which altogether generate a diverse panel of more than 25 million monthly average users from which we collect our data. Placer.ai’s partners ensure compliance with all privacy laws and regulations in their data collection practices.

Utilizing this data, Placer.ai leverages machine learning and advanced algorithms to accurately estimate visits to locations across the United States.

Click here to read more about how Placer.ai protects data privacy

Placer is committed to building the world’s most accurate location analytics platform without compromising individual privacy. From the beginning, it has been critical that privacy is not only a core requirement for our technical solutions, but a cornerstone of our business and product architecture.

Placer works hard to comply with all national and state-specific privacy regulations and is continuously monitoring changes to ensure we stay ahead of the evolving privacy landscape.

Browse the FAQ below to learn more about how we protect the privacy of individuals.

What kind of data does Placer collect from consumers’ mobile devices?

Placer doesn’t collect location data directly from consumers, but receives data from our mobile application partners who are collecting location data from millions of mobile devices. The collected data includes - foot traffic information and auxiliary supporting data such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi beacons, battery, and network.

What techniques does Placer use to protect individual privacy?

Placer does not collect user identifiers and does not sell or share users’ data. Placer is an analytics company – not a data broker.

Placer invests heavily in building privacy mechanisms, including a differential privacy service (DPS) to remove individual identifiers from the data we receive from our providers, already on our providers' premises, even before it enters our systems.

Placer’s customers are only given aggregated statistical information about physical locations, and never any data tied to specific individuals or devices. We also use end-to-end encryption to protect data in transit and at rest, using a centralized key management system and rotating keys.

Additionally, individual dots, heatmaps, and journey origins on our dashboard are obfuscated such that any bit of information presented preserves K-anonymity of 50, meaning that every dot on the map is only an approximate location and does not indicate the actual location of any individual or device.