SCENARIO

You have just been hired by Ancillary.com, a seller of accessories for everything under the sun, including waterproof stickers for pool floats and decorative bands and cases for sunglasses. The company sells cell phone cases, e-cigarette cases, wine spouts, hanging air fresheners for homes and automobiles, book ends, kitchen implements, visors and shields for computer screens, passport holders, gardening tools and lawn ornaments, and catalogs full of health and beauty products. The list seems endless. As the CEO likes to say, Ancillary offers, without doubt, the widest assortment of low-price consumer products from a single company anywhere.

Ancillary's operations are similarly diverse. The company originated with a team of sales consultants selling home and beauty products at small parties in the homes of customers, and this base business is still thriving. However, the company now sells online through retail sites designated for industries and demographics, sites such as ''My Cool Ride" for automobile-related products or ''Zoomer'' for gear aimed toward young adults. The company organization includes a plethora of divisions, units and outrigger operations, as Ancillary has been built along a decentered model rewarding individual initiative and flexibility, while also acquiring key assets. The retail sites seem to all function differently, and you wonder about their compliance with regulations and industry standards. Providing tech support to these sites is also a challenge, partly due to a variety of logins and authentication protocols.

You have been asked to lead three important new projects at Ancillary:

The first is the personal data management and security component of a multi-faceted initiative to unify the company's culture. For this project, you are considering using a series of third- party servers to provide company data and approved applications to employees.

The second project involves providing point of sales technology for the home sales force, allowing them to move beyond paper checks and manual credit card imprinting.

Finally, you are charged with developing privacy protections for a single web store housing all the company's product lines as well as products from affiliates. This new omnibus site will be known, aptly, as ''Under the Sun.'' The Director of Marketing wants the site not only to sell Ancillary's products, but to link to additional products from other retailers through paid advertisements. You need to brief the executive team of security concerns posed by this approach.

If you are asked to advise on privacy concerns regarding paid advertisements, which is the most important aspect to cover?