The world of retailing has changed dramatically due to eCommerce. Today's online shopping platforms and mobile apps allow consumers to easily search for activewear, watch health-focused videos, or sign up for loyalty programs on their computers and smartphones. The companies that run these eCommerce websites have created an extremely convenient and personal shopping experience for consumers. Behind that good shopping experience, there are a huge number of tracking technologies, used to monitor how customers interact with a company's website or mobile app.

Retailers use technologies that are often called cookies, analytic scripts, marketing pixels, etc., in addition to many other digital tools to track and analyze how their customers behave online. An example of this is seeing how long a visitor spent on a specific page, what items were added to the shopping cart before purchasing, and which items were sold the most. Retailers can use these insights to make their websites operate with more integrity, offer more personalized product recommendations, and determine how effective their advertising is with consumers.

The wide use of these tracking technologies has raised serious privacy concerns in many industries, and rightly so, if a company is collecting browsing activity, purchasing behavior or account interaction from its customers and sharing that information with third parties, their website becomes subject to legal liability and regulatory scrutiny when that information is shared without real notice or consent from the consumer.

Concerns surrounding privacy and security are evident in a new report from AloYoga.com Privacy Investigation - A Study of Online Tracking Tools on a Popular Retailer. This type of research will help determine whether or not the digital technologies that are incorporated within a website collect information about the customer's actions on it, and how this information is shared with third parties in ways that consumers may not totally understand.

This issue does not only pertain to one retailer, however; it has been found in every online retailer across the eCommerce industry. Digital tracking technologies are an integral part of the digital infrastructure that enables consumers to shop online. Tracking technologies are used by retailers to measure the engagement of their customers, manage loyalty programs, analyze customer journeys, and display targeted advertisements throughout the Internet.

As an example of the issue, after a consumer looks at an item on the internet, the analytical tools that the site uses may track how many times that item was viewed. If that same consumer subsequently sees an advertisement for that item on other websites or social media sites, the data from their initial view was likely used to help create the advertising algorithms. This type of advertising is now part of everyday business but raises the question of how much information a consumer agrees to share while browsing the internet normally.

A second reason for concerns about privacy issues stems from the digital marketing system's growing complexity. Many of the modern, usable websites integrate multiple third-party services, including payment processing companies, analytics services, video services, and advertising networks. Many of these systems require personal data to functions (and that data transfer occurs) as a result of the connection between the first party (the website) and the third party.

Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of how the information they provide while using the internet is collected and used. The number of new privacy regulations created in the past few years by states across the U.S., as well as many countries around the world, is increasing. Many of these laws require companies to be transparent regarding their tracking practices and to provide users with a mechanism to control what happens to their information.

Establishing transparency in digital tracking is a critical component to developing retailer trust with their online customers. Providing clear privacy policies to consumers, obtaining their consent via banners attached to a site, and practicing responsible sharing of customer data can all aid retailers in ensuring that technological advances are not ahead of consumers' expectations.

As the future of online shopping continues to progress, the balance between personalization vs. privacy will be an ongoing challenge for both retailers and consumers within the existing digital environment.