Have you ever thought about how much information you reveal during your typical visit to a clothing store? Your weight, clothing preferences and more personal information can be collected and stored. In the metaverse, where everything is immersive and data collection can be even more detailed, retailers must be aware of privacy and cybersecurity challenges that they will face.
In this article, Kristin Madigan, Jacob Canter, and Alexis Ward dive into privacy and cybersecurity issues for retailers entering the metaverse. They discuss important questions, including what privacy laws are applicable to retailer who hosts customers from different regions of the world. In this case, retailers must figure out a user’s location, determine location-specific data collection laws, and make sure to comply with those laws. Retailers must also think about how to handle international transactions in a world where there are no physical boundaries. This means complying with international data transfer and data localization laws to allow for proper exchanges and storage of data. Then there’s the issue of data privacy laws in a digital world as new and complex as the metaverse. The authors state that providing data collection notice won’t be as simple as having a hyperlink on a webpage. Also, the process of obtaining consent will be an interesting challenge to overcome in such an immersive digital space.
Overall, the importance of maintaining data governance is critical in the metaverse because every move you make can be collected as data. Therefore, retailers must also consider the cybersecurity concerns regarding the need to protect such a large amount of information. But if they stay vigilant of these privacy and cybersecurity issues, they can benefit from the wide data collection capabilities of the metaverse.