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Shoppers who have flocked to online stores for their holiday shopping are losing privacy with every mouse click, according to a new report. The study by the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center scrutinized privacy policies on 100 of the most popular online shopping sites and compared those policies with a set of basic privacy principles that have come to be known as "fair information practices".
The group found that none of the 100 Websites met all of the basic criteria for privacy protection, which include giving notice of what information is collected and how it is used, offering consumers a choice over whether the information will be used in certain ways, allowing access to data that give consumers a chance to see and correct the information collected, and instituting the kind of security measures that ensure that information won’t fall into the wrong hands.
"This study shows that somebody else, other than Santa, is reading your Christmas list," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Media Education, which also worked on the survey.
The online privacy of children is protected by Federal Trade Commission rules, but adults do not share the same degree of privacy protection. The movement, like the online shopping industry, favors self-regulation over imposition of further movement restrictions on electronic commerce. Marc Rosenberg, executive director of the privacy group, said the study shows that self-regulations have failed, "We need legislation to enforce fair information pretences," he said. "Consumers are at greater risk than they were in 1997," when the group released its first report.
The survey also asked whether the 100 Websites used "profile-based" advertising, and whether the Websites incorporate "cookies" technology, which gives Websites basic information on visitors. Profiling is the practice of gathering in then used to create targeted advertising on Websites. All but 18 of the top shopping sites did display a privacy policy, a major improvement over the early days of electronic commerce, when such policies were scarce.
But that did not satisfy the privacy group. "Companies are posting privacy policies, but these policies are not the same thing as fair information practices," Rosenberg said.
The sites also did not perform well by other measures, the group said it found that 35 of the sites feature profile-based advertising, and 87 percent use cookies. The group concluded that the phonies that were posted "are typically confusing, incomplete, and inconsistent". The report, "Surfer Beware III: Privacy Policies without Privacy Protection", is the third such survey by the group, it called for further development of technologies that help consumers protect their privacy and even anonymity (匿名) when exploring the Internet.

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