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Privacy
issues threaten CRM thinking
By Sue Peters
Some commentators have argued that
in terms of surveillance, existing tracking technology
is actually better than wearing an electronic tag.
Cookies trace our movements on the Internet, and location-based
technology (in your mobile or PDA) means that our
whereabouts can be easily tracked. And when we turn
these devices off, (or, in the case of the mobile,
leave them at home by mistake) CCTVs and satellites
watch us while we do our shopping.
But the fascination with new technology
and the benefits it will bring are masking fundamental
questions about the price we will pay for this freedom.
Issues of privacy have been heightened with the increasing
penetration and use of new media.
These concerns threaten to significantly
impact those attempting to capture, consolidate and
interpret consumer / user demographics and behavioural
information. Although such information is central
to much CRM thinking, there are now significant indications
that this information may be fundamentally challenged
by at least three privacy related issues:
1. Growing consumer concerns regarding
methods of corporate and governmental collection and
consolidation of personal information.
2. Increasing emphasis on data
security and fraud.
3. ConsumersÍ growing belief in
the commercial value of personal information: could
personal data become a currency?
These issues are matched by a developing
groundswell of resistant opinion in the agenda of
civil liberties programmes in the USA and, to a lesser
degree, in the United Kingdom and Europe. This is
matched by lobby groups and political agendas seeking
tighter legislative control around data protection
and new technologies in general.
I recently attended the computer
human interaction conference (CHI) in the US, where
it was clear that the events of 9/11 had made security
a hot topic.Many papers addressed how new biometric
technology, from eye scans and fingerprints to watching
how we walk and even breathe, will help to secure
national freedom. Already, for example, visitors to
the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island are individually
scanned by facial recognition technology to try and
identify known terrorists.
We have probably never been more
acutely aware of all this surveillance than we are
now. But whilst such data may lead to better more
personalised services, or improved levels of security,
companies and governments need to closely examine
how far people are willing to trade private intrusion,
with or without permission. Issues of media control
and ubiquity will become conflated alongside more
technology-related issues to highlight particular
consumer concerns.
For example, by analysing our movements
and being identifiable by more than just our signature
brings about many more issues other than privacy:
who would actually police such techniques and in what
circumstances are they acceptable?Does it take the
events of September 11th in order for us
to surrender all our rights of anonymity? As our privacy
decreases and intrusion increases, these sorts of
questions are unlikely to be easily answered.
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