Online Privacy is Still a Concern

After 12 years of the common man using the Internet for everything from online gaming to banking, online privacy still seems to be of great concern for over 80% of internet users.

Concern, prevalent among all age segments, increases with respondent age: rising from 67.3% among respondents 18-24 years to 85.7% with respondents 55 years and older.

* Over 60% of respondents are aware of the tracking, collecting and sharing of information that occurs as a result of online activities.

* Respondents do not see value in ads targeted to them based on their web surfing behavior – even if it improves their web surfing experience.

As someone who not only uses the Internet daily, but who makes their living from this media, I know that I have a different relationship with the Internet than the typical users, but it's still surprising that so many people are concerned about their personal privacy online. In an age of grocery stores tracking our purchases through our loyalty cards to provide us coupons for products that we normally purchase, health care companies and pharmacies data-mining every purchase we make, large stores monitor traffic patterns to determine the best placement of items to Amazon's "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" and "What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?" - a feature that I have a love/hate relationship with - I am a little surprised to hear that consumers are concerned that web sites track what consumers are doing on those sites.

But, setting my personal opinion aside, the concern exists, it's real and we need to address it, especially on a health or medically related site.

What's the best way to handle this?

1. Establish Privacy and Terms of Use policies, and then follow them all the time, not just when it's convenient.

2. Hire or appoint a chief Privacy Officer and give that person the ultimate authority over all things related to personally identifiable information.

4. Collect only the information you need, and no more. You may wish to have 20 data points on every consumer but if you are only goin to be using 5 data points, then collect 5 for now.

3. Explain (out in the open) why you are collecting data and what you will be doing with that data.

I have found that being open about why you collecting data, and what you will be doing with that data goes a long way to increase a consumer's trust level in your site.