You feel a gentle vibration on your Apple Watch: your heart rate has been elevated for the past hour, and the device suggests a breathing exercise. The same gadget that tracks your every heartbeat, sleep pattern, and daily movement also provides personalized health insights that make you feel like you have a personal wellness coach on your wrist.
Meanwhile, data from your workouts, location patterns, and even stress levels are continuously collected, analyzed, and stored by Apple and third-party health apps.
Rather than feeling studied, you likely feel taken care of, and see the premium price you’ve paid for this comprehensive wellness surveillance as a worthwhile investment.
This is luxury surveillance in action: A phenomenon in which being tracked becomes a status symbol rather than a privacy concern.
Defining luxury surveillance
Privacy is generally perceived as a right, and extensive data collection is often seen as a potential risk. But within a luxury lifestyle context, data collection that might otherwise be considered surveillance is perceived differently.
Instead of triggering alarm, being tracked and building a substantial digital footprint becomes a status symbol, an indicator of belonging to an exclusive tier where hyper-personalized attention signifies luxury.
Dr. Chris Gilliard coined this the phenomenon of luxury surveillance. A scholar of digital privacy, Gilliard describes luxury surveillance as: “surveillance that people pay for and whose tracking, monitoring, and quantification features are understood by the user as benefits they are likely to celebrate.”
Luxury surveillance thrives where multiple high tech advancements converge, from GPS combined with biometric sensors to machine learning and connected ecosystems.
These tools enable brands to gather vast amounts of data, from purchase history and browsing behavior to location and lifestyle patterns.
This expanded reach fuels their ability to offer experiences that aren’t just personalized, but hyper-specific, anticipating needs, curating exclusive offers, and delivering seamless, bespoke service.
The numbers behind the phenomenon
The luxury surveillance economy represents significant market value. According to Grand View Research, the global wearable technology market was estimated at USD 84.2 billion in 2024. It’s anticipated to grow 13.6 percent from 2025 to 2030, with smartwatches and their multifunctional features leading the market with a 34 percent share.
The distinction between mass-market surveillance and luxury surveillance is clear in the price tag. While basic fitness trackers sell for under $100, luxury smartwatches fetch prices from $400 to over $30,000 for premium models.
This price differential isn’t just about materials — it’s connected to customization and the perceived value of sophisticated surveillance packaged as a premium service.
The allure of paying to be tracked
What do an Apple smartwatch and an ankle monitor have in common? From a technical standpoint, both are strapped to the body and continuously report the wearer’s movements and often biometrics. For Dr. Chris Gillard,
The difference boils down to design, context, and choice, and that difference is where status is born. If a tracking device looks sleek and is sold by a prestigious brand, people will see it as desirable and pay a high-tier price for the privilege of wearing it.
Adepts of luxury surveillance willingly opt in and proudly buy devices like the Apple Watch or Oura rings not just for utility, but as conspicuous status symbols. Being continuously monitored – tracking your steps, heartbeat, location, sleep, and more – is considered self-improvement, or even biohacking.
In other words, keeping track of individual health markers in order to increase performance and well-being becomes yet another signifier of belonging to a luxury-oriented group.
The unspoken truth is that these systems are performing surveillance, but in luxury contexts that word is replaced with “smart living” or “personalized service.” All of these flourishes make the surveilled feel important, with their every preference catalogued, and their presence noted. Thus, constant tracking becomes not only normalized but aspirational.
In the luxury world, this extensive data profile isn’t necessarily used for broad targeted advertising. Instead, it enables hyper-personalized services or exclusive offers, such as anticipating a client’s needs, curating tailored recommendations for travel or purchases, or providing priority access.
The perceived value comes from being uniquely seen and catered to, ultimately transforming data collection from an intrusion into an indication of belonging to exclusive circles where such attention is expected.
Balancing personalization and privacy
As consumers grow more data literate and privacy-conscious, luxury brands must perform a delicate balancing act. Personalization remains a powerful driver of engagement and loyalty, but it must be balanced with respect for boundaries and autonomy.
Consumers today expect a degree of personalization, especially in luxury. But they also expect transparency, control, and the right to opt out. Brands that heavily rely on opaque data practices risk undermining trust, no matter how elegant the interface or exclusive the service.
To succeed, marketers must think in gradients of consent, and offer tiered personalization, empower opt-ins, and design user experiences that clearly communicate the value exchange.
Transparency as a competitive edge
As data breaches dominate headlines, transparency about data collection and usage emerges as a genuine competitive advantage. Brands that clearly communicate what data they collect, how they use it, and how they protect it can differentiate themselves in a crowded market.
This transparency goes beyond mere compliance to becoming a form of luxury customer service. From easy to understand privacy policies and proactive consent opt-ins, luxury brands have an opportunity to show how responsible data practices can elevate the customer experience.
Trust becomes part of the brand equity, especially as hyper-targeted personalization walks a fine line between convenience and intrusion.
The regulatory challenge
The luxury surveillance economy operates within an increasingly complex regulatory landscape. While regulations like the GDPR in Europe and the CCPA in California have established baseline privacy protections, they struggle to address the nuanced ethics of voluntary data sharing in a luxury lifestyle context.
Current frameworks focus primarily on consent and disclosure, but they don’t address the power dynamics inherent in luxury surveillance.
The challenge for regulators is in distinguishing between exploitative surveillance and genuinely beneficial data sharing.
When a luxury car manufacturer tracks driving patterns to provide personalized safety recommendations, is this surveillance or service? When a high-end fitness brand analyzes sleep data to offer customized wellness programs, where’s the line between helpful and invasive?
For example, what if your car insurance company had access to your driving patterns and sleep data and could tell if you’d been driving while sleep-deprived. Could that be used to affect your coverage and rates?
Regulators are grappling with these questions while trying to protect consumers who may not fully understand the implications of their choices. The complexity of modern data ecosystems means that even knowledgeable consumers struggle to make fully informed decisions about data sharing.
Redefining luxury in the digital age
The intersection of surveillance and luxury challenges our fundamental understanding of both privacy and status. What emerges is a complex landscape where being tracked can be as much a privilege as the ability to avoid tracking, where data sharing becomes a form of social capital, and where privacy itself becomes a luxury commodity.
This transformation reflects broader changes in how we understand ownership, autonomy, and value in the digital age.
Traditional luxury has historically been about owning exclusive physical objects or accessing restricted experiences. Digital luxury is about controlling information flows, by both giving data strategically and protecting it selectively.
For marketers in this space, success requires a nuanced understanding of the psychology of voluntary surveillance. Consumers want to feel that their data sharing is a choice that enhances their status and improves their experiences, not a requirement for a basic service.
For consumers, navigating this landscape requires new forms of digital literacy and critical thinking about the true costs and benefits of data sharing. The ability to make informed choices about surveillance will increasingly become its own kind of privilege.
The ultimate question isn’t whether surveillance can be luxurious — clearly, it can — but whether we can ensure that it doesn’t create a system where privacy becomes a luxury good available only to those who can afford it.