Companies prey on clueless consumers online, privacy is a joke
By Matt Jansen
Every move we make online is tracked, and some people may argue that if they aren’t doing anything wrong then there’s nothing to worry about. That’s great until someone with less discerning morals decides to use your personal information to finance a new boat, or abducts your social networking account and destroys your good name. A new survey from Consumer Reports confirms that Americans are very concerned about privacy online.
That makes parts of the current transition from installed software like Microsoft Office to hosted services like Google’s Apps vaguely alarming. And even though according to Consumer Reports National Research Center “. . . 93 percent of Americans think internet companies should always ask for permission before using personal information,” there is no law in place that holds companies accountable to that standard. It’s a mind-boggling majority that’s blatantly ignored by many companies online.
Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst at Consumers Union says:
“Americans are clearly concerned with how their personal information is being collected and used by internet companies. The vast majority of consumers want more control over their personal information online and want the ability to stop internet companies from tracking and profiling them.”
Rather than wait for the government to generate legislation, industry players are scrambling to establish industry standards.
Of course, detailed segmenting is part of the attraction for companies to do business online, they expect a better understanding of what visitors are doing on their site. A problem arises though when companies sprawl widely enough to impact the surfer experience virtually everywhere. ISPs are in that boat along with Internet giants like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
On some level it seems appropriate to enact a law that meets the needs of such a large swath of people. Industry standards are good, but they’re also much more “bendable”. That need becomes especially clear when considering that so many people their information is private, “61% [of those polled] are confident that what they do online is private and not shared without their permission.”
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September 27th, 2008
61% are clueless. ANYONE who thinks their information is protected is a FOOL. But its a FAR larger problem than just online. I’ve received notice from two companies just this week that my informations was compromised. One was lost computer backup tapes, the other was an employee selling personal info. Making it out to be a ‘online’ problem is masking the REAL issues.