What is PII? PII Meaning, Importance, and Compliance

PII in data protection stands for Personally Identifiable Information, which refers to any data that can uniquely identify an individual—either alone or combined with other data points. Examples of PII include full names, email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, government ID numbers, and, in certain cases, IP addresses. Indirect identifiers such as the combination of date of birth and ZIP code can also be considered PII, as together they could uniquely pinpoint someone.

Handling PII correctly is critical to complying with privacy regulations like GDPR, CCPA, or HIPAA and avoiding costly breaches or legal penalties.

With Trackingplan’s Privacy Audit, you can automatically monitor accidental sharing of personal data with other third‑party vendors, detecting when PII is unintentionally collected in your analytics to ensure your data stays compliant, secure, and clean—without having to manually review every tracking event.