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Introduction

'Tis the Season to Protect Your Identity

Don’t let your personal information be part of your holiday giving. Although the holidays are known as a season for giving, you don’t want to give away your personally identifiable information (PII) in the process of buying gifts! Many customers are unaware of how companies treat their PII once they entrust it to a website. This can be risky considering it is PII that gives thieves the information they need to commit fraud and identity theft. So make this report part of your holiday preparations this year—read it before you hand over your credit card number to another website. It will help you decide where to shop online by showing you what to look for in a privacy policy.

From October to November 2007, NYPIRG reviewed the privacy policies of 484 highly-trafficked retailer sites to discover:

• How well they informed customers about the use of their PII.
• How much control they granted customers over the use of their PII.

Consumers can't protect their PII if they don't know how it's being used or who is in possession of it. Effective, consumer-friendly privacy policies are easy to locate and offer a wealth of information. They leave readers well-aware of how their information will be treated and shared and where to get questions answered. NYPIRG found a number of online privacy policies with such steel-door features. Unfortunately, we also found Web sites offering weak consumer protection.

Screen Door Awards for Leaving Customers Uninformed

Just as it wouldn’t make sense to trust a screen door to protect household valuables, it would also be a mistake to trust a credit card number or other valuable PII to a company with flimsy privacy practices or an inadequate privacy policy.

 

Steel Door Awards for Informing Consumers

Banks keep their assets locked behind steel doors. Effective privacy policies offer similar protection by limiting exposure to ID thieves and empowering consumers with privacy concerns to shop around.

 

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1. The Pew Internet and American Life Project, Internet Activities, December 2006.