Slashdot Mirror
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.
Marketing information just isn't as valuable when everyone and their dog.com already has it.
NO CARRIER
Those are still pretty pathetic statistics... every time my email address is demanded (although it will never be used, whats the point in asking for it then??) I get rather irate... and those were discounted in this figure...
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
[reporter] do you have a privacy policy?g hest*cough*bidder*.
[company A] why of course. It is the policy of this company that all personal and private information is jealously guarded with utmost secrecy from the time of collection *cough*until*cough*we*cough*cough*sellit*cough*hi
[company B] we collect no personal information on our website. we've found its much easier to buy mailing lists and any personal info we need off russian hackers whenever we need new credit cards^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h marketing prospects. besides, its quite simple to buy information from Company A Media Promotions, Inc.
I love some on the terms and conditions you find on the Megacorps websites.
This from the Disney site:
If, at our request, you send certain specific submissions (e.g., postings to chat, boards, or contests)[...] (collectively, the "Submissions"), the Submissions shall be deemed, and shall remain, our property. [...] Without limitation of the foregoing, we shall exclusively own all now-known or hereafter existing rights to the Submissions of every kind and nature throughout the universe and shall be entitled to unrestricted use of the Submissions for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, without compensation to the provider of the Submissions.
This is a gem: we shall exclusively own all now-known or hereafter existing rights to the Submissions...
And I love that throughout the universe bit.
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?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Since few people actualy put valid info when subscribing to free web stuff, I think we are going to start seeing banner ads targeting 60 year old woman with 12 kids that make $900,000 a year. So screw privacy, be truthful on online forms.
Hacker Media
For example, a couple months ago I started getting emails from M$ - a monthly MS Office newsletter. To my default account that I've had for 10 years without spam! Not to one of the disposable spam aliases..How? I never signed up for it! I don't use/like Office! And I've never never published that address! So I tried to "unsubscribe". The link (cause I'll be dammed if I'm sending them an email to verify my address from!) told me "You do not have a passport account..." Duhhhh!
So another one arrives today. Here is the link, sent to me from "0_28145_1E184A2F-7C3F-D111-9D3F-0000F84121EB_CA@N ewsletters.Microsoft.com". It said "You can manage all your Microsoft.com communication preferences from this site."
Aren't these unsubscribe things supposed to work? Yea, Yea, I'm not stupid enough to click on them from spammers, but from Microsoft? With all the scrutiny they are under right now?
p.s. - after I previewed this story - the link automagically changed from microsoft.com/misc/unsubscribe.htm to microsoft.com/info/unsubscribe.htm!! Interesting!
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
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
With a 30% market share now IE 6.0 is another driving force behind this trend. At the high privacy level IE 6.0 will not accept cookies from any site without a compact P3P privacy policy. Locking out such a potentially large segment of users will make you hurry things up. I know a lot of our ECommerce clients are suddenly moving very quickly in this area because of IE 6.0.
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.
Name: Freddy Fukerfaster
Address: l1234 Rodeo Drive
City: Beverly Hills
State: CA
Zip: 90210
Sex: Female
Age: 142
Phone: (111)222-3333
I know I'm not the only person that does this. When I had to sign up on Sun's site to d/l the JDK I actually entered "Scott McNealy" with Sun's Headquaters address and Phone #. The amount of work involved in weeding all the garbage in the DB makes it worthless.
Unless someone needs my address for billing or shipping they are not going to get it.
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.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
You could try forging a bounce message from: Mailer-Daemon@yourdomain.
You can usually just change your email address in your mail client though there are a few ISP's don't allow outgoing email with a from line that isn't the users assigned mailbox.
Alternativly just deliver it straight to port 25, as per example;
RFC2821me@vax:~ > host -t MX Newsletters.Microsoft.com
Newsletters.Microsoft.com mail is handled (pri=10) by Newsletters.Microsoft.com
me@vax:~ > telnet Newsletters.Microsoft.com 25
Connected to Newsletters.Microsoft.com.
220 newsletters.microsoft.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 5.0.2195.4905
HELO mydomain.com
250 newsletters.microsoft.com Hello [62.64.219.7]
MAIL FROM: Mailer-Daemon@mydomain.com
250 2.1.0 Mailer-Daemon@mydomain.com....Sender OK
RCPT TO: 0_28145_1E184A2F-7C3F-D111-9D3F-0000F84121EB_CA@N
250 2.1.5 0_28145_1E184A2F-7C3F-D111-9D3F-0000F84121EB_CA@N
data
354 Start mail input; end with .
Subject: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender
This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (Exim).
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
username@mydomain.com
SMTP error from remote mailer after RCPT TO::
host mydomain [192.100.1.81]: 550 Unknown local user 'username'
.
note the empty line to seperate the subject from the body.