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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.
①The study by the Washington based Electronic Priyacy 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".
②The group found that none of the 100 sites 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 in formation collected, and instituting the kind of security measures that ensure that the information won’t fall into the wrong hands.
"This study showed 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 government, like the online shopping industry, favors self-regulation over imposition of further government restrictions on electronic commerce.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the privacy group, said the study showed that self-regulations had failed. "We need legislation to enforce fair information practices," 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 sites used "profile based" advertising, and whether the sites incorporated "cookies" technology, which gives Web sites basic information on visitors. Profiling is the practice of gathering information about consumers’ interests by tracking their movements online. The information is then used to create targeted advertising on Web sites.
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," Rotenberg said.
The sites also did not perform well by other measures, the group said. It found that 35 of the sites featured profile based advertising, and 87 percent used cookies. The group concluded that the policies that were posted "are typically confusing, incomplete, and inconsistent". The report "Suffer 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 when exploring the Internet.
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