On CNBC this morning (Europe CNBC at least), there was an interesting piece
about the July 1 deadline for financial institutions getting copies of their
privacy policies out to people. A lady from Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (I
forget her name unfortunately) made some good responses to the questions
presented regarding what motivation people might have to explicitly opt out of
such things.
At the beginning of the piece they talked about 500,000 different privacy
policies going out, but some statistic arguing that less than 1% of consumers
are choosing to opt out. Their guest made a good argument that such a
measurement is probably incorrect, given that other polls show 80%-90% of
people are concerned about how their information is being tossed around.
They took a brief look at MBNA's privacy policy. I was a little disappointed
that they didn't point out that a lot of places sending such policies out are
pretty much saying they will do anything with anything at any time. (i.e.,
the policy itself is essentially useless)
Really encouraging to see the topic talked about on TV, even if it didn't
necessarily change the minds of a lot of viewers. (Yet?)
B
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Brendan Kehoe [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.zen.org/~brendan/
