For example, a major search engine uses cookies to capture behavioral information to provide more targeted future searches. Personally identifying information denotes a visitor as a unique individual by such things as name, email address, social security number. Non-personally identifying information is data that associates a visitor to a class of individuals. There are two ways that web visitors can maintain their privacy. The most common way is to opt out of data collection through the steps dictated by a website or infomediary.
Information is gathered and it is the visitor's responsibility to disable the data collection.
The opt-in approach requires a visitor to explicitly state that they want to share information with a website or infomediary. If permission is not granted, no data collection is completed. A business that combines online and offline personally identifying information on visitors and sells this information to other businesses for a fee. It allows visitors to dictate their privacy preferences when dealing with e-businesses. It strictly adheres to these preferences and also does convenient things for visitors while they are on the web like filling in registration forms, remembering various passwords and managing receipts of online shopping purchases.