Data Fading
Data fading is a way of gracefully degrading details in customer records. Companies that do not offer a fading data privacy policy are likely to gather less information from their customers due to their privacy and security concerns about long term data retention.
For example as a business grows it may want to identify the best location for a new distribution warehouse or shop and to do this they need to identify where their customers are based. They can't do this if you haven't consented to your personal information being used for marketing purposes but if you opted-in to a data fading policy they may have access to enough information to help with their planning requirements.
The concept is quite simple. To start with you provide your full address including house number and postcode. You opt-in to their data fade privacy policy. After a while their record of your address is simplified so that they only keep details of your town. Later this is reduced to county level and eventually your details are completely removed. By offering to fade data in this way they can encourage more people to opt-in and gain valuable extended usage of your personal information.
Ideally a Data Fading policy should steer towards fully anonymised data but an intermediate process known as Pseudonymised Data may also be used.
When you make an online purchase you will usually provide your delivery address to the retailer. The retailer will find this information essential to complete the transaction but may ask you if they can retain it for marketing purposes. An increasing trend is for customers to opt-out of further usage but a fading data privacy policy may help to encourage more people to opt-in and reverse this trend.
