Privacy a Big Priority for Mobile Location Analytics Companies at "Retail's BIG Show"

This week, over 30,000 attendees and 500 companies swarmed the Javits Center in New York City for the 2014 National Retail Federation Big Show. The massive expo showcased the latest in retail technology, with mobile location analytics companies making a particularly strong showing. Ten of these companies (Aislelabs, Brickstream, Euclid, iInside, Measurence, Mexia Interactive, Radius Networks, ReadMe Systems, SOLOMO Technology, and Turnstyle Solutions) have already made a significant commitment to protecting privacy by signing on to our Code of Conduct. However, as companies continue to find exciting new ways to improve the retail experience using consumer data, privacy and security are hardly foregone conclusions. [link] Square CEO Jack Dorsey put it nicely in his keynote on Wednesday morning, when he remarked:

“Privacy and security is not an end point. There’s no one solution. It’s always changing. You have to constantly be refreshing your technology. You have to give simple, intuitive tools to people so they can control their own privacy and make their own decisions. Otherwise, they will feel like there is all this big data out there and then ‘there’s me.’ If you give them simple controls, tools to glean insights from their own data, then you have something really powerful.”

Here at FPF — particularly as we work hard on building a central site for opting out of mobile location analytics — we continue to look for ways to give consumers choices and control in how they share their data in the retail space.