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Is Online Privacy Getting Better?
jeffy124 writes: "It appears marketers are finding that there's little value in stockpiling the personal info of web users. Either that or they're responding to the negative feedback of users. In a survey of 400 commercial websites, when compared with figures from a 2000 FTC study, more sites have more prominent and explanatory privacy policies, less carry third-party cookies, less collect personal info, and more use opt-in collection. The study was performed by the Progress & Freedom Foundation, and the full report can be found here." Note that the Progress & Freedom Foundation is an industry-sponsored group which generally favors a non-regulated online marketplace.
The company I work for uses opt-in newsletters (thank god) with a good removal system.
The result: less time and money spent on irritated customers who were spammed with information they didn't want.
When it comes to real, corporate business environments (note the qualification.. i'm not talking about fly-by-nights) the cost of opt-out mailing systems is too high. Someone has to go through all the irate emails sent to customer service to see if any have a valid message in them. That costs them money in terms of manhours, bandwidth, and storage (granted, the storage is cheap, but in today's economy, every penny is counted twice).
As someone who's actually opted in to a few mailing lists from companies I like (glenmorangie whisky for one) to get relevent information, I can tell you right now that I'm going to read what they send me, and that's what counts. Businesses don't want stats on how many emails you sent out. They want to know how many people actually read what they have to say. It's the eyeballs that really count.
Anything coming from a business I didn't specifically sign up for gets either a) deleted or b) forwarded to abuse@ for handling. Smart businesses are realizing that consumers are becoming more web-savvy, and opt-out is just not a good marketing practice.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
most of the sites they probably surveyed are the honest type. Places like Amazon, NY Times, even slashdot who need trust in their customers to keep them coming back. It's expected that these types of organizations will provide good/honest practices or else some people wont do business with them. Ever see a dishonest spamming organization that refuses to remove you from a mailing list survive?
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Are we supposed to believe that this couldn't possibly be caused by the bottom dropping out of the ad banner market?
Also "more prominent and explanatory privacy policies" does not make "more privacy". For one thing nobody reads them, for another they can be changed at any time (just like any other policy). Oh yeah, and there's nobody actually ENFORCING these things either. Privacy policies aren't worth the bits they're taking up.
Using opt-in, you won't collect millions of e-mail adresses, but it is easy to collect a few thousand in a short period. A few thousand of interested people.
Here some stats out of my experience:
- we sent no more than 2 e-mails a month
- 2,6% of the subscribers use unworking e-mail adresses - we mark them as invalid
- 8,3% of the subscribers have unsubscribed
- after sending news about some promotion to our subscribers, orders triple for about 2 days
- if the promotion lasts for a week, most will order on the last day
My advice: use opt-in if you want to make real money.ms
Privacy policies are not there to guarantee your privacy, they are used to tell you how little you have. The tone is invariably one of agression: "This is what we will do with your information, like it or lump it. P.S. We will change this if we want."
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Are totally worthless. How many of them have a small clause at the bottom that says "this statement is not a guarantee, we reserve the right to change our minds and alter it at any time without telling you." How many simply say, in fancy legal language, "yeah we're still gonna sell everybody your email address, but it's private. like, we won't tell people on the street without them paying us first."
The only real privacy on the internet is the privacy we give ourselves through subterfuge, care, and lying outright.
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