Get Out Of Town: Study Claims That Online Shoppers Actually Care About Privacy
from the are-you-kidding? dept
A new study claims that internet users will pay more for goods at websites with good privacy policies than at sites with bad ones. The study, like others before it, would imply that internet users actually care and pay attention to these things. Unfortunately, there seems to be a major disconnect between what happens in the lab and what happens in the real world, as companies routinely lose customer data without suffering much in the way of actual consequences. It's not hard to see why these studies aren't good predictors of actual behavior. In a survey, nobody would be willing to admit that they'd risk identity theft to save a few bucks on a purchase. But in the real world, where buyers often come to products through comparison shopping engines that sort by price, and the likelihood of losing one's data seems remote, consumers aren't inclined to pay much attention to a site's privacy policy. Furthermore, in this particular study, the participants were given a tool to evaluate a site's privacy policy, which is already one major step beyond what most consumers take. While it's obviously a problem that retailers (online and offline) don't see much incentive to take customer privacy more seriously, perhaps it should be asked why shoppers don't see an incentive to actually care.
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It's scary what some of the privacy policies say...
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Major Disconnects
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Re:
I mean, if you choose not to shop at site X even though they're the cheapest for product Z you want, won't you be paying extra when you order it from site Y?
just a thought :-)
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Mayor of CCTV city doesn't like to be videod
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/programmes/mischief/
They took a camera into the mayor's of Durham's office and videod him. He didn't like it and ordered them to stop filming.
So even the guy who put a huge number of CCTVs didn't like to be videod in a public office.
People like privacy. It's why it's a fundamental human right. Even the people who claim it has to be sacrificed in exchange for security, they are the most secretive people of all.
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Few Read Privacy Policies
So when someone says, "I read privacy policies!", they're one of three things: accountants, lawyers, or the group of people that still have their Winnebagos loaded up with supplies from the Y2K days.
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Privacy Tool
I endeavor to read privacy policies & terms of service agreements, but they are often so ridiculously long and filled with complex legal speak that reading them, let alone understanding the implications of what they say, is a difficult and time consuming task. I interpret insurance policies for a living, and MANY of these TOS and privacy agreements are more complex difficult to comprehend.
I could drive to the store, pick out my item, and drive home in the time it takes to read one of these agreements.
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Cost of information
If there's a lesson here, it might be that consumers and law makers should seek *transparency* in privacy polices, rather than more stringent privacy law. A simplified, standardized privacy statement on every Web site--as easy to read as the nutritional index on any can of beans--would help the market dictate policy norms. And if this study is right, that would probably be a more effective corporate-decision driver than any law.
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