North American Corporate Privacy Comparison

Scooter[AMMO] writes "The Toronto Star has published an article on a study comparing the way companies protect the privacy of their customers, which is surely a topic of interest to most /.'ers. Choice quote: 'The study, the first to compare the corporate privacy practices of comparable Canadian and U.S. firms, found that Canadian businesses see their privacy practices as an opportunity to improve relations with customers, while their U.S. counterparts viewed privacy measures more as a way of complying with legislation and avoiding civil lawsuits.'"

Comments

Hmmm

[Plaeroma]

In the United States, "It's all about complying with the law, which may or may not have any bearing to people," said Ponemon. "In Canada, I got the sense that they thought it was just the right thing to do."

Isn't that exactly why we have laws in the first place, to set up penalties for not doing the 'right thing?'

Re:Hmmm

[Tackhead]

> > In the United States, "It's all about complying with the law, which may or may not have any bearing to people," said Ponemon. "In Canada, I got the sense that they thought it was just the right thing to do."
>
> Isn't that exactly why we have laws in the first place, to set up penalties for not doing the 'right thing?'

When there's no law, there are market incentives to Do The Right Thing. (If you fail to Do The Right Thing, your customers get pissed off and leave.)

The instant anything is codified into law - whether it's the Right Thing To Do or not - the penalty for failing to comply with the law means you get sued, go to jail, or both.

Oddly enough, as soon as this happens, complying with the law suddenly becomes more important than even thinking about what the Right Thing might be, and Doing The Right Thing falls completely off the radar. Funny, that.

Privacy: It's dead. You have none. Get over it.

Privacy and outsourcing

[GeckoFood]

The privacy issue of customers and employees alike takes an interesting spin when you factor in outsourcing. Suddenly, all of your personal data is in someone's database overseas. That's ok, until there's a political problem. When you have a government who doesn't give a rat's butt about privacy laws in other countries, and someone decides to sell your data, you're screwed.

People just don't care.

[DrEldarion]

Indeed, 61 per cent of surveyed Canadian companies linked "good privacy practices" to customer trust and brand loyalty, compared to only 17 per cent of U.S. companies.

Maybe it's different in Canada, but there's a reason only 17% of US companies think that - because people around here just don't care! Sure, we complain about spam and junk mail, but how many people do you know (that don't read Slashdot!) actually care about their privacy at all? I'd say less than 10%. Look at how people react to invasions of privacy by the government ("It's for our protection!") and by companies ("Hey, if I use this card who cares if they track my purchases, I saved $2!"). They just don't give a damn!

Is it possible that Canadian citizens care more about privacy, making it make more sense for Canadian corporations to value privacy more?

My story..

[MisanthropicProgram]

I wsa in a meeting with some marketing people about designing our ecommerce site. To make a long story short, the marketing guy says "We need to collect personal information from our customers."
Me: "Why? We're not doing any marketing studies."
Marketing guy: "Someday, we may need it."
A lot of this has do with the magical thinking that collecting as much information on your customers leads to better business decisions. Most of the time, I see these folks collecting so much data that they don't have a clue what to do with it.

Too Kind to U.S.

[linuxwrangler]

The article's conclusion seems too nice to US companies. Compare the article:

"It could be that (U.S. companies) feel what they're doing is more than adequate and just as protective of the customer."

with this passage from a MetLife insurance application (printed entirely in bold in the original, emphasis mine):

We may use what we know about you in order to offer you our other products and services. We may disclose this information (other than consumer reports and health information) to our affiliates so that they can offer their products and services, or ours, to you. By law, we don't have to let you prevent these disclosures. Our affiliates include life, car and home insurers, securities firms, broker-dealers, a bank, a legal plans company and financial advisors. In the future we may have affiliates in other businesses.

Re:Here we go again United States vs. Canada

[Txiasaeia]

Not to start a flame war (honestly), but I think you've got it a bit backwards. Canadians aren't trying to be more like Europe, we're trying to be less like the US. We get your local news stations here on cable and satellite, and it ain't pretty, so we do anything we can do to make it so that we don't have to sit through five or six gun-related news stories per night.

Why do Canadians do things to distance ourselves from the US? We just don't agree all the time. That's acceptable, right? We didn't want to go to war, you guys did, so we each did our own thing. In Canada, the emphasis is on the community, not the individual - the greater group decided that we didn't want to go to war, so we didn't as a group. In the US, everything is geared towards individuals, so the people that wanted to go to war (i.e. politicans, soldiers) did, whereas the ones who didn't (i.e. Michael Moore ;) ) protested. They're just different systems, that's all. This is a gross generalistion, of course, but it gives you a basic idea.

Disclaimer: I am not a troll. Promise!