Each year, most of us receive annual privacy notices from firms we do business with -- whether they pertain to travel, hospitality, healthcare, entertainment, or financial services.
Companies are required to disclose how they will share the personal information they collect on customers, although unfortunately, not all consumers read this paperwork.
The Fine Print
Even though they may be user-unfriendly in appearance and tone, companies must pay close heed to their own privacy notices -- or else.
In many cases, the data collecting is far more comprehensive than people imagine it to be, thanks to new ways to plumb the data, such as reality mining, which gathers and analyzes information from machine-generated data that is capable of predicting individuals' social behavior.
On a website, this is done by tracking customer buying patterns. It's the reason why you see a recommended "buy" list of books or DVDs in the same general category as the last purchases you made on Amazon. Smartphones further extend this intelligence because they log calls, messages, and record where you are and even who you are proximate to via GPS. The final layer to this intelligence gathering is social media, where third-party services actually track your activities and who you affiliate with.
How does this help business?
If you're an online retailer, you've got a matter of seconds (while the customer is on your website) to consummate a sale. The better you are at predictive selling, the better your sales numbers will be.
If you're a healthcare services provider monitoring Alzheimer's patients in their homes, the more real-time data you can collect based on their whereabouts, activity sensors placed in their homes, and on their cellphones, the easier it will be to intervene if patients need help and are unable to request it.
If you're a metropolitan area monitoring city traffic flows, the more up-to-the-minute data you can collect about developing traffic jams, the better you can preempt complications by sending out messages to roadside e-billboards that inform motorists of upcoming congestion and advise them on alternate routes. You may be able to control traffic lights more effectively to control the flow of vehicles in the congested area.
If you're a financial institution, the more you know about a person's buying patterns (and potentially, even the people they associate with in social media channels) the likelier you will be able to reach out to more customers with the right products.
The balance enterprises need to strike in using this data is how far they should go to exploit this vast morass of data. This is the balance organizations must strike between helping the customer (and improving profits) and maintaining trust (which also builds profits).
Financial services is a good example, because major banks reserve billions of dollars for loans they anticipate will "go bad." Some of these institutions have begun using social media affiliations (or who their customers "hang around" with) as a new dimension of data intelligence that they apply to customers. Some consumers worry that lending institutions will start leveraging personal affiliations as one of the determinants of whether -- or not -- to make a loan to a particular individual. Banks and credit card services companies insist they only use only such information for marketing purposes, not for making any loan decisions.
Social media is an attractive route to increased information about prospective clients. It could help them capitalize on new sources of customer information that are good for business, while maintaining the trust of their customers. Enterprises should place the same emphasis on this as they presently do for regulatory compliance and internal policies.
Enterprises can proactively do this by:
Including the information that demonstrates how they balance their decision with due diligence whenever they roll a new source of intelligence into their operations.
Finding an automated way to integrate this new intelligence-gathering into their daily operations, so that line employees are not deciding how and where to use it.
Telling customers in their annual privacy statements not only about who they will share customer information with, but also how the information will be used.
The data is out there and tools are available to pull it all together, but organizations must walk a fine line so they don't frighten prospects or existing customers away. It is a balancing act, and corporate reputations depend on getting it right.
I find security questions frustrating, because they so often ask for information which could easily be found by googling (place of birth). Of course, you could make up the answer, but then you need to remember you did so.
You need a lawyer to understand the terms of services, even between lawers there is no single interpretation. How many softwares or websites you use? You cant call a lawer for aal of them.
@shehzadi, sounds like your typical disclaimer and or terms of service that needs to be agreed upon and or signed. Most of the time the developers and companies cover their tracks and the user just doesn't read those terms and simply agrees yet turns around and fights it if something comes up. Then again, I think there should be some laws that protect the users in that the developer and company need to make those terms more blunt than they normally do.
@shehzadi, I agree there. At the same time, we all know that both the browser and the site play a role. In my opinion, I would think the browser is more important because it should be able to stop any malicious activities a website tries to throw out there, but not everything is perfect nor will it ever be.
Here I can suggest for the legal terms if they are in hundred of pages, there must be a summary for important points which should be covered before signing. The person from the company and customer both needs to sign it after understanding the knitty gritty so that if anything comes afterword the customer can claim that it was not covered. Their might be other options as well.
Jason agreed. The extra security options provided by the browsers / website is actually the face cover so that they should not be blammed. They are to cover their base of providing a reason able security cover to stop critics from blamming them if they can develop strong security protocols it will be quite difficult for the consumers to even log on and end result is loss of clientage. So the websites are to keep a happy mix stopping both sides.
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