From Computer Business Review, a sister publication.
Concerns that companies and governments might misuse the increasingly accurate data they hold on individuals are beginning to be voiced. Says software consultant Pamela Gray: Why don’t I own the information about me? If I do something, doesn’t that act belong to me somehow? This is where the real issue to do with privacy begins. Niche marketing means doing some real digging into my personal habits, what I like to eat, where I like to go on holiday, all the calls I make, even. I think there’s going to be some real outcry about this soon – about who can do what with what sort of information. There’s a difference, surely, between ‘I can do this with my data!’ and ‘Ought I to do this with my data?’
In June the Federal Trade Commission held a two-day workshop to try to determine if the US Government should begin setting guidelines for how corporations plan to use data gathered over the Internet. In the end the FTC decided to hold off doing anything now and will revisit the situation in six months. But the warning shot has been fired. Companies who delve too deeply into electronic profiling may face both a legislative hand on their shoulder and a consumer backlash. The ‘parents’ of data warehousing are both well aware of the possible dangers. Someone said to me the other day, ‘You guys are the advance shock troops for Big Brother’, says database analyst and data warehouse ‘father’ Bill Inmon. Yes, it concerns me. But then so does global warming and the loss of habitat, about which I can similarly do very little individually. I’m sad to say I think a lot of that abuse is inevitable – we absolutely now have the tools to go in that direction. Adds Ralph Kimball, founder of Red Brick Systems: It’s very scary. The consensus seems to be that – for the moment anyway – if there is misuse of mined data, the consequences for the miscreant companies will soon discourage them. Companies will probably push the limit on this stuff until they get their wrists slapped. But the customer will have a lot of power to stop it. If AT&T upsets me with overly direct marketing, I can just switch to MCI – and they’ll lose the opportunity to cross-sell me.
Organizations are already savvy to this kind of problem, claims Holistic Systems’ vice president of marketing, Elvin Monteleone. Others argue that most consumers will accept the shrinkage of privacy in return for the possible conveniences. This civil liberties question will be of concern in many European countries in particular, but I argue there’s a pay-off between privacy and efficiency. The more a supplier knows my habits the better he’ll serve my needs. And as for ‘red lining’ [refusing to offer services to a social or ethnic group], there already exists legislation against that. On the other hand, the genie got out of this particular bottle a long time ago, says John Harte, CEO of NeoVista. This is a point echoed by Mark Smith, vice president of marketing at data mining software company Quadstone: A lot of the data which could possibly be misused is also of course freely given by the public when they fill in questionnaires and forms. But it would really be only an organization as powerful as a government which would be able to link together so many different databases from different sources, rather than just the direct mail industry.
