Privacy FAQ
If you find an privacy or security weakness in the Placer.ai platform please contact ResponsibleDisclosure@placer.ai immediately after discovery so we can take swift action to fix it.
Please provide sufficient information for us to reproduce the problem to help us solve it as quickly as possible.
Include an e-mail address in case we need your cooperation to better understand the problem and identify an effective fix.
Placer.ai limits access to its most comprehensive data set to certain customers. Customers who seek paid access to Placer.ai are vetted for their affiliation with an incorporated business that has a brick-and-mortar commercial interest. They are also required to certify that they will use Placer.ai’s data in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. Placer.ai specifically does not provide paid access to any law enforcement agencies or advocacy groups.
As a marketing and educational tool, Placer.ai offers a free version for prospective commercial customers and the general public. However, that platform deliberately has limited functionality compared with the paid version. The dashboard allows non-paying customers to see some of Placer.ai’s proprietary technology at work on a small subset of all properties for which Placer.ai aggregates data—namely, several large retail chains and major retail properties—and limits them to general overview data from the most recent calendar month. As with the paid version, the free version of Placer.ai provides no data that can be traced back to individual users.
We do not provide access to our paid platform to any law enforcement agency. Placer has never received a law enforcement request for an individual user’s location data, nor could we comply with such a request since the data we have doesn’t include personal identifiers.
Placer servers are located in the United States.
Our privacy notice is available here and describes how we collect, store, use and share information about the users of our services, which are Placer customers.
Additionally, this Trust Center provides public visibility into the type of data we receive, how we use it, and the privacy protections built into our platform.
Placer stores data from our partners including foot traffic information and auxiliary supporting data such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi beacons, battery, and network. The data we receive is stripped of identifiers, such as Mobile Ad IDs (MAIDs), names, and phone numbers. This data is protected with end-to-end encryption in transit and at rest, using a centralized key management system with rotating keys. Employee access is restricted based on job responsibilities, such as compliance monitoring and customer support. This access is logged and audited.
Placer doesn’t collect location data directly from consumers, but receives location data from our mobile application partners who are collecting location data from millions of mobile devices. In all our agreements with partners they represent they are in full compliance with all privacy laws and regulations. The data we receive is already stripped of identifiers, such as Mobile Ad IDs (MAIDs). In fact, the data fields we receive from our partners do not include any personal identifying fields. This prevents our partners from even accidently sending us personal identifiers.
In addition to technical controls, we use representations, warranties, and covenants in our contacts to ensure partners comply with applicable privacy laws and policies. We also monitor the location data partners send us to ensure it is stripped of identifiers, such as MAIDs, names, and phone numbers.
No. Placer.ai's product was designed to ensure privacy by not gathering PII like MAIDs and only provides aggregate data.
Customers use Placer to make better decisions about physical locations and accordingly we only offer statistically extrapolated data about locations. Yet, in order to avoid misconceptions and mitigate any potential concerns, Placer has adopted a policy that restricts customers from generating reports for certain locations. In line with this policy, we do not knowingly sell or share data about places such as military facilities, places of worship, preK-12 schools, rehabilitation centers, or women’s health facilities.
We invest heavily in building privacy mechanisms directly into our platform, including a differential privacy service to remove individual identifiers from the data we receive from our partners, already on our partners' premises, even before it enters our systems.
Customers are only given aggregated statistical information about brick and mortar locations, and never any data tied to specific individuals. 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 always only an approximate location and does not indicate the actual location of any one particular device.
Nothing. The data we share or sell with customers doesn’t include identifying information about specific individuals. Customers are only given aggregated statistical information about brick and mortar locations, such that any bit of information presented preserves K-anonymity of 50. This means that every dot on the map, whether representing a residential area or the end of a road segment, is always only an approximate location and does not indicate the actual location of any one particular device.