In an Online World, Privacy May Be a Dying Species
You would think that a trouble-prone Information Age giant like America Online Inc. would have announced, with special care, any plans to sell personal information about its customers to third parties.
The past actions of the online service have, after all, generated a particularly vigilant and reproachful customer base. In the past year alone, AOL has been sued over its billing practices and lambasted by customers for the way it calculated customer charges. It was also forced to reach settlement agreements with 45 state attorneys general after a new deluge of customers swamped its service capabilities, denying customers timely access to the network.
But did AOL go public in a smoothly orchestrated way over a $50-million marketing arrangement (and an earlier $100-million deal) to give subscribers’ home telephone numbers to two telemarketing firms? No, the terms were quietly posted on AOL’s member service agreement on July 1 and only recently hit the news. Predictably, subscribers and privacy advocates howled, and on Thursday the company said it would not rent telephone numbers to the people who make those annoying dinner-time sales calls.
It was the smallest of personal privacy victories. AOL may still make unsolicited phone calls to its customers and already rents names and addresses to marketing firms. That’s nothing new.
A wide range of personal information (driver’s licenses, probate records, Social Security numbers, previous addresses and telephone numbers, encounters with the law and personal finance information) was available, and for sale, long before it was popular to go online.
The information is often used to tailor sales pitches. It’s why your weakness for certain fashions or books or electronic gadgets has resulted in the closely targeted catalogs and junk mail that arrive daily in your mailbox. Such “affinity marketing” was welcomed in the past when it came from the waiter who knew what foods you liked or the store clerk who called you whenever he knew you would be interested in a new product.
But its far more vigorous electronic forms give pause and have opened the eyes of Americans to just how unprivate their private lives really are. Businesses, and the federal government, have gotten the message. Industry giants such as Microsoft and Netscape have promised to limit the data they collect on customers. Eight database giants recently went before the Federal Trade Commission, promising strict limitations on access to personal information. And the FTC is forcing the matter by examining whether rules and government regulation might be in order.
It’s also true that there are ways to protect your Internet privacy. Coded electronic mail is one. Anonymous remailers that protect your identity while you are online is another way. Your computer can also be set to warn you of the presence of electronic “cookies,” which record information about your online travels and make that information available to others.
Privacy is best maintained through common sense and personal vigilance, but the task gets harder with every electronic transaction we embrace.
