|
Protecting Your Brand - Social Media |
|
|
- How protecting consumer’s privacy is important for brands?
Protecting your consumer’s privacy is critical if you want the consumer
to respect your brand. Imagine giving a trusted friend your private
details only for them to go around telling everyone, the effect is
exactly the same for brands and the fall out is lack of trust and most
importantly a significant risk of having to run a crisis communications
strategy to rebuild that trust. Security on your companies website
should be regularly tested by third party security testing companies. 
- What are the consequences of violating consumer’s privacy?
You could end up in court and being sued for damages, especially if the loss of private data incurred damage to your consumer such as identity theft, credit card fraud or other crime has been committed. If you are holding hundreds or thousands of consumer details it could simply bankrupt your company.
- Is there any law that prevents marketers from violating consumer’s privacy?
In the UAE the law isn’t well defined, in Europe every company has its own local privacy laws and is also managed by the European privacy laws. However its important to point out that in almost every country a government has the right to get information regarding a consumers data including telephone calls, emails and text messages should it require them. If you really want to be private then the last thing you should do is to use the internet or email but that of course would cut you off from society.
- What are the most familiar patterns and forms of consumer’s privacy violation?
Credit card fraud and identity theft are the most common forms of privacy crime, but there are also non crimes that violate a users privacy. A good example is list brokering where a company sells data to a third party that the consumer has not agreed to, spam email, mobile text marketing etc. At H2O we make it a point never to sell, broker or offer customer lists we only ever manage OPT in services where a customer requests specific information. This should be the norm, but it simply isn’t.
- How violating consumer’s privacy affect his decision to buy the products or services of that brand?
Quite simply it will cut you off from the consumer. Opt in options where a consumer requests information or allows information from third parties is really the only way to ensure you are meeting your obligations to the consumer. I changed my bank after I was subject to a credit card fraud and now as a result I positively reinforce the message not to use that bank every time I speak to someone looking for a bank.
- What are the sectors that mostly violating consumer’s privacy?
The adult services industry, electronic downloads industry and directory services listings tend to be risky, loyalty cards that you use in store tend to hold a vast amount of data including what you buy and how often.
If you don’t have to check a box to agree to a companies privacy policy then it may just be that they don’t have one. Emails asking for information in return for transferring extortionate amounts of money to you for your services or products advertised on the internet where you have to send money by western union are scams and should be avoided at all costs.
- How consumer has to deal with this issue, what he has to do?
There are five simple things a consumer has to remember to protect themselves.
1) Read the fine print and ask for the company’s data protection and privacy policy – if they can’t provide one do not deal with them.
2) Ensure that you never agree to let third parties use the information you provide. Make sure this isn’t in the small print.
3) If something looks too good to be true it generally is a scam, don’t ever send personal details of yourself over the internet to people you don’t know.
4) If you buy online ensure that the company you deal with is reputable and has a local office in your country of residence.
5) Ensure that you use a private VPN such as hotspot shield from Anchor Free to ensure that no one is connecting to your laptop during wifi sessions and downloading data in coffee shops and malls
- How consumers can know their rights regarding the privacy issue?
Speak to your local government consumers association, every Arabic country has one. Ensure you always read the small print on everything – you don’t have any rights if you sign them away because they were buried in the small print of a contact.
- How brands collect information about the consumers?
Database marketing is a huge business; here is a list of ten ways your information is collected by brands.
1) Email list brokers that buy email addresses from online operators.
2) Loyalty Card companies that track your spending habits
3) Social Networks such as facebook and MySpace can be used to get access to your private data – Don’t put anything on there you wouldn’t want a potential employer to see.
4) Competitions and special offer cards in magazines and mail
5) Online Job networks that sell your CV to brands and recruiters
6) Government lists and demographic data provided to companies
7) Business associations, networks and clubs that provide access to their members base for marketing
8) Online polls and surveys that you may take
9) “cookies” and invasive software applications that are installed by websites to track your browsing patterns
10) Enquires – filling in an enquiry form online
- How internet has empowered the violating of consumers privacy?
Experts in the field of Internet privacy have a consensus that Internet privacy does not really exist – Many of the features required by the consumer actually wouldn’t work without installing cookies, therefore some degree of submission to provide this data is generally required to use the internet effectively. You should set your browser settings based on your own personal privacy policy – these can generally be modified under the tools section of your browser.
The internet is certainly another tool for brands and marketers to use to collect your demographic data if you let them, at the end of the day you are responsible for educating yourself, checking the contracts, setting your own privacy settings and managing your online experience – if people don’t want brands to get their information it is quite easy.
- Do you consider disturbing consumers and attacking their privacy a marketing strategy?
No, and never would I suggest it. We always advise our customers at H2O to never use invasive advertising such as pop ups or pop unders or to ever sell or rent out a list of data. We also always recommend a privacy policy, a terms of use policy for the website and Opt In permission based email marketing rather than spam.
- What is your advice for the brands adopting this strategy?
For brands disturbing consumers and attacking their privacy my advice is stop, as soon as you are found out that you are being less than honest you will find consumers abandoning you. Be honest, be transparent and be open when it comes to consumers privacy, it’s a fact that many consumers don’t care too much about their privacy if you help them obtain their goals, but certainly don’t steel it from them – that’s just evil.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Steve Vaile's Blog