FC: More on enonymous' privacy ratings, and a rant on infomediaries

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

**********

> From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavitt () hotmail com>
> To: declan () well com
> Cc: shari () clickrebates com, chris () clickrebates com
> Subject: Re: FC: Enonymous.com's privacy ratings include errors, oversights
> Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 10:04:13 PDT
>
> DeClan,
>
> I'm not surprised.
>
> Their privacy rating for my company's site (ClickDough.Com) was/is 
> factually incorrect.
>
> http://client.enonymous.com/client/snapshot.asp?host=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clickdough.com&submit=submit
>
> Says "Share without permission."
>
> Quote from our privacy policy (stars inserted for emphasis):
>
> We are a permission-based marketing company; this means that *you are in 
> control* of how much information you share, how it is used and who sees it.
>
> [...]
>
> Demographic and profile data may also be collected at our site. We use 
> this data to tailor your experience at our site, show you content that you 
> are interested in, and display the content according to your preferences. 
> This information is shared with advertisers on an *aggregate* basis, this 
> means that we will *not disclose* your name, email address or *any* other 
> personally identifiable information to anyone **without your consent**.
>
> Emphatically, we do not share user information without explicit consent. 
> We are a "trusted infomediary", handing out our user information willy 
> nilly would obviously not work.
>
> Obviously, *someone* must have read/visited our site, because they have a 
> link to our privacy policy, but they obviously don't bother to actually 
> read the privacy policies they rate.
>
> Thomas

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> Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 14:02:31 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "K. M. Ellis" <protozoa () tux org>
> To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
> Subject: A rant on infomediaries (was Re: FC: Enonymous.com's privacy ratings
>  include errors, oversights)
>
>
> As a privacy advocate, I give enonymous.com's infomediary scheme a privacy
> rating of 0 out of 4 stars. When you check a site's "privacy rating" the
> histogram makes it clear that they track the surfing habits of their
> users, match those habits with the age, gender and "left brain/right
> brain" status, supposedly so that Enonymous can then broker that
> information to marketers.
>
> This tracking apparently occurs even if the site the surfer visits does
> not wish for information to be collected about its web site visitors.  By
> checking the privacy rating for www.privacy.org, which I maintain on
> behalf of EPIC, I disovered things about the people who browse the site
> that I have no business knowing, and would never care to know.  I have no
> desire to run targeted advertising through my site.  Enonymous has
> compromised my own stated privacy policy, at least as far as poor suckers
> who use their software are concerned.
>
> This all goes to show that utilizing an infomediary is a poor choice for
> any net user who cares about privacy.  Infomediary systems do not enhance
> the overall privacy of net users. By taking the ability to determine what
> information is collected out of the hands of the webmasters who create the
> sites it can frequently make things worse for users, privacy-wise.  Make
> no mistake: infomediaries such as Enonymous are hungry for consumer data -
> they generate revenue by gathering and sharing it.  User privacy is a
> peripheral concern, a red herring used only for public relations.
>
> Furthermore, while user profiling and other technologies that are bad for
> privacy is certainly the norm for commercial web sites, is it truly a
> prevalent practice?  If I constantly allow one organization to monitor
> each page I browse, allowing them to block some kinds of information from
> pernicious profilers but at the same time letting them collect information
> where it otherwise would not be collected, am I really better off,
> privacy-wise?
>
> Unfortunately for web surfers worldwide there is no recourse against
> companies who do not abide by their own privaacy policies; a stern
> talking-to from Truste is really the worst they can expect to suffer, and
> only if they're a member. If privacy policies were regarded as enforceable
> contracts between users and e-commerce companies, there would be no need
> for middlemen such as Enonymous.
>
>
>     --------- K. Ellis -- KB3CWP  --  protozoa () tux org  -------------
>           http://www.tux.org/~protozoa -- Personal Page
>           http://www.privacy.org -- The Privacy News Portal
>         Each white tablet contains only inert ingredients.
>     -----------------------------------------------------------------

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