We normally associate the term “profiling” or “profiler” with Hollywood movies or TV series. In this instance, profiling means creating a perpetrator profile in order to track down serial killers or terrorists on the basis of their data, characteristics and information – a somewhat romanticized idea and also vivid in our minds concerning the Fight Against Evil.

Back in 1978 the FBI’s head of behavioral research, Robert Ressler, first created the term profiling which describes nothing more than collecting and merging information about a person to then evaluate and analyze it for a specific purpose. Profiling is now used similarly in the field of marketing, primarily for target advertising aimed at specific groups of people, thereby increasing the efficiency of these measures. All of this happens via data that the customer makes available to the respective company through consent – under the condition that this information
may not be passed on to third parties.

Data protection has become increasingly important in the age of advancing digitalization, and the DSVGO ensures that companies must adhere to strict regulations when dealing with personal data, otherwise they face extremely high penalties. Everything that happens within the legal framework should ultimately serve to strengthen the relationship between customers and companies, allowing both sides to benefit – the customer receives product recommendations or deals that are perfectly tailored to them, and the company in turn can generate more sales
and has significantly less wastage in its advertising.

But what happens when customer-related data is illegally passed on to third parties or, worse – ends up in the hands of criminals? Here, the cases range from minor fake e-mails landing in a person’s Inbox containing malware links, to complete identity theft. In this case, unauthorized persons have illegally obtained or tapped into a person’s personal data and henceforth pretend to be the person concerned. This makes it relatively easy to commit merchandise credit fraud, for example, in which the victim’s data is used to order large sums of goods on account and the victim is then billed for them without noticing. Cell phone tariffs or accounts opened with false data are also not uncommon and cause massive damage.
It is therefore clear that the handling, specification and delicacy of the data that a customer passes on to a company are extremely important and at the same time very sensitive. In this regard, the credibility, professionalism and, above all, the pledge about processing of personal data on a company’s website should always be thoroughly investigated before disclosing one’s
information.

At Unite, the user experience has been given the highest priority from the get-go. This includes not only an ad-free web presence, but also zero data-sharing with third parties or for marketing purposes. All personal data is stored encrypted on our servers and only analyzed internally and anonymously to improve the user experience. It is also important to note that all of our servers
are DSGVO compliant, located in Europe and meet the highest security standards worldwide. No one but Unite has access to the data, and even this is only accessible to us in encrypted and anonymized form. So the next time you hear about profiling on the Internet or processing of personal data, take a critical look and pay close attention to what information you share and with whom.