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.
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
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.
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
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
IMO, this is one of the good things about IE6... I already liked the fact that it has SOME features in this field... the fact that it is causing other businesses to stand up and take notice is a definite bonus. Good privacy policies benefit us all. (Course, we already KNEW that, but the point is businesses are realising this.)
Course, (and this will probably prompt some to spend some valuable mod points) I've had nothing but great experiences with IE6... the fact that it has a 'delete cookies' button was the first addition I noticed, and liked. IE6 is a really good browser, at least for the better part. Nothing's perfect, as we all know, but IMO, finally Microsoft's starting to get there with their browser.
(Yes, Mozilla has good features in this regard too. But Mozilla often crashes on my system. This is not Pro-IE Anti-Moz. I like Mozilla too. In this case, I just HAPPEN to prefer IE.) (sees more people using their mod points to silence this one ^_^)
I'd also like to note that I de-integrated IE from Windows... so my main thing is - hopefully they'll make Windows run as nice.
Just my $0.02CDN.