User Behavior

Patterns of actions, interactions, and activities that individuals exhibit when using websites, applications, or digital services, often collected and analyzed for purposes including product improvement, personalization, security, and marketing. User behavior data encompasses: pages viewed, features used, time spent, click patterns, navigation paths, search queries, purchase behavior, content interactions, device usage, and session patterns. This data is valuable for understanding how people use products and improving user experiences, but raises privacy concerns when it enables profiling, tracking across contexts, or reveals sensitive information about individuals. Under privacy regulations, collecting and analyzing user behavior data requires: lawful basis (often consent or legitimate interests), transparency about collection and use, appropriate security measures, limited retention, and respect for user rights. Organizations should: clearly disclose behavior tracking in privacy policies, implement granular consent for behavioral analytics and marketing uses, provide opt-out mechanisms, anonymize or aggregate data where individual-level tracking isn't necessary, and implement privacy-by-design principles in analytics systems.