| Following the dictum that a problem doesn’t exist until there’s a special-interest group assigned to it, 26 companies have formed an online-privacy consortium. The Personalization Consortium will police privacy policies while educating Internet users on personalization issues.
“Privacy is important because if the wrong set of dominos falls, it could hurt companies,” says Jeff Harbison, corporate-development manager with Elity Systems Inc., a personalization company in New Jersey, and a consortium member. Consortium guidelines require businesses to tell consumers what data is being collected in the personalization process and to let them opt out of collection. Member companies agree to audit their privacy practices annually. |
