By choosing not to share their customer’s personal information with third parties that don’t play a direct role in providing the product or service for which the information was intended businesses are making customer privacy a priority. What little income they might have made selling or sharing PII will be more than made up for by the trusting relationship they are creating with their customers.

jockey.com states “We WILL NOT make the personal information of those who access our site available to others.”¹ The rest of this privacy policy seems to be consistent with this statement; unlike most online privacy policies that we surveyed.

Some companies proactively state that they do not contribute consumers’ personal information to cooperative databases, which holds information on customers and their transactions. Many companies will contribute information to a database in return for aggregate information on the customers other companies have provided. Such databases are used for promotional mailings and the like.

ralphlauren.com states “RalphLauren.com does not contribute to or participate in cooperative databases, which give other companies access to such Personal Information.”²

Some privacy policies allow consumers to see what personal information a company has in its possession and make changes to or delete that information from the records. Businesses with privacy policies that allow such a degree of control deserve an award, especially if they provide clear and specific instructions on how to do it.

bhphotovideo.com states “How to access and/or correct Your Information: You can access all the personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain by phoning 800-606-6969 or 212-444-6615, mail ( 420 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA), or via e-mail.”³

Businesses that allow customers to indicate if they want their PII shared with third parties by opting in to a sharing policy afford customers a significant degree of protection and control over their PII. Businesses that share PII by default but offer customers the ability to opt out of sharing offer an equal amount of control, if perhaps a bit less protection.. While most of the travel-industry Web sites NYPIRG looked at in for this paper offered neither option, those that did deserve high praise.

rocawear.com states “We will not disclose your personally identifiable information to any persons or entities outside of our company, nor lease, license, sublicense, rent, transfer, disclose, disseminate or otherwise grant access to such information unless: (i) You have been given an opportunity to "opt-in" and have agreed to so opt-in to such disclosure of your information; (ii) We must share your information in order to provide a product or service that you have ordered or requested, in which case we will require that any third person or entity we use to fulfill your order agrees that it does not have the right to use your information other than to fulfill your order or request; or (iii) We are required to respond to subpoena, court orders or other requirement of law which requires disclosure of your information."