PETs allow online users to protect the privacy of their personally identifiable information (PII), which is often provided to and handled by services or applications.
PETs use techniques to minimize an information system's possession of personal data without losing functionality.
Within private negotiations, the transaction partners may additionally bundle the personal information collection and processing schemes with monetary or non-monetary rewards.
PETs also provide the opportunity for consumers or people who want privacy-protection to hide their personal identities.
Transparency involves granting people with sufficient details about the rationale used in automated decision-making processes.
Additionally, the effort to grant users access is considered soft privacy technology.
[2] Examples of such technologies include onion routing, the secret ballot, and VPNs[6] used for democratic elections.
Some examples include: Examples of privacy enhancing technologies that are being researched or developed include[20] limited disclosure technology, anonymous credentials, negotiation and enforcement of data handling conditions, and data transaction logs.
Moreover, this enforcement can be remotely audited by the user, for example by verifying chains of certification based on Trusted computing modules or by verifying privacy seals/labels that were issued by third party auditing organizations (e.g. data protection agencies).