Slashdot Mirror
Online Shoppers are Willing to Pay More for Privacy
Caroline Matische writes "People are willing to pay more to buy items from online retailers who make their privacy policies clear, a new Carnegie Mellon University study showed. People were more likely to buy from online merchants with good privacy policies and were also willing to pay about 60 cents extra on a $15 purchase when buying from a site with a privacy policy they liked."
Privacy is central to our dignity and our basic human rights. Privacy ensures and protects our rights to free assembly and free speech, especially in areas where the governments would seek to curtail these rights. The right to privacy ensures our autonomy in the world and in our affairs. Think of your information as a gift you give to agencies and people you trust. How do you feel when any gift you give is "regifted." How do you feel when something you say in confidence is repeated and spread through your community, whether that is your office of group of friends. How would you feel if a friend gave your phone number out to every person who asked them. How would you feel if a friend revealed an embarrassing medical condition you had or a financial problem you were struggling with. Thinking of privacy in these terms helps you to see why your privacy is an important part of your life.
That's ridiculous. Users should expect, no, demand privacy, not have to pay for it. Privacy should already be there, because the user has to trust the company to handle their data correctly.
I won't trust a company that makes people pay for "extra privacy." That screams distrust to me.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
People look for the "shipped in plain brown packages" when buying porn related items.
It varies, depending on to whom you give your information.
In most of Europe, companies are bound by laws implementing the EU's Data Protection Directive, which makes it clear that your data is not just another asset of the company which collects it, and that companies can only process it for the purposes for which you gave them the data.
In the US, companies howl with outrage at the prospect that they should treat their customers with similar fairness. You could argue that resisting even the smallest extra expense is in the short term interests of their shareholders. Of course that ignore the possibility that ethical policies may increase customer loyalty, and better serve their shareholders' longer term interests - as well as being "The Right Thing".
There is a lot of nonsense spoken about "impersonal corporations". Folk forget that it's actual human beings who make the "decisions of the corporation". Some of those people do good and some do evil.
Maybe they should be held to account?
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
Researcher: Would you be willing to help us out today by answering a few questions and buying something online? We're researching consumer buying decisions as they correlate to privacy policies of internet merchants.
Woman in Mall: Sure, what do I have to buy?
Researcher: Just batteries. Oh and a... um... vibrator.
Woman in Mall: <turns around and walks away looking for security>
Researcher: But you get to keep it!
Woman in Mall: Well, I guess if it's for scientific research...
Is that now every shoddy internet business is going to have a big serious looking "we care about your privacy" notice stuck somewhere prominent (but not prominent enough to displace advertising).
They won't change their actual privacy policies or anything, and they'll still leak credit card details etc. to the highest bidders.
Think I'm being cynical? Maybe. But think about it, this is bound to happen.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Customers pay for service. If they are willing to pay more for privacy, this means that privacy is equated with a service that can be bought. Since then is privacy something you buy? Isn't privacy a right? Should we pay to enjoy our rights? I am afraid that the blatant lack of privacy has made even the customers to abandon the idea that they have this right as an unrealistic romantic ideal and accept the harsh reality that in today's corporate jungle there are no rights and everything can be sold and bought.