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Screen Door Awards: Uninformed Consumers
These screen door awards go to privacy policy features we found to do a poor job of informing consumers about the use of their personal information. And the awards go to... |
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| 1. No Policy Posted/Nonworking Links | With identity theft a major concern and consumers clamoring for greater privacy protection, Web sites that lack privacy policies altogether ought to be a thing of the past. Unfortunately, they are not. Sites with nonworking links are just as bad. In e-commerce, leaving a privacy policy off a Web site may lead potential customers to infer that the company 1) doesn’t have a plan in place to safeguard their PII, or 2) doesn’t want to disclose how they plan on using customer PII. Neither thought is particularly comforting. |
auntiesbeads.com petsunited.com.au |
| 2. Hard-to-Find Links |
If privacy were a priority, one would expect a company to make sure their online privacy policy was easy to find, on the home page and on every page where PII is requested. Digging through site maps or searching through poorly labeled pages discourages consumers from obtaining privacy information they need. Businesses should make their privacy policies as easy to find as their purchasing pages |
acekaraoke.com has no privacy policy immediately available on its Web site. When we called, we were told that the privacy policy was only accessible once the customer added a product to their shopping cart to be purchased. |
| 3. Confusing Language |
Some privacy policies are written in legal jargon, challenging anyone but a lawyer to decipher their meaning. Other policies, while not written in lawyer-lingo, are so confusing, vague, and full of caveats that readers are left without a clear understanding of how their personal information is used or protected. Also unhelpful is the practice of stating what “may” happen, as opposed to giving concrete information. |
The privacy policy at disneyshopping.com, Disney’s shopping site, is so long and complex it takes much concentration to decipher the meaning of the text. The language is somewhat legalistic, and while everything seems to be defined, after reading the many-paged document several times, consumers might likely still find themselves confused about who their information will be shared with, what choices they have to protect it, and how much control they have over their personally identifiable information.1 |
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- http://disney.go.com/corporate/privacy/pp_wdig.html