Love Your Data
by Miki Saxon
By now you all know that I am a digital dinosaur, no cell phone, no iAnything, and a careful participant online.
I would rather brand my company, RampUp Solutions, and product, Option Sanity™, than brand myself.
I probably qualify for residency in the privacy nut house.
However, I read with interest an opinion piece by Richard H. Thaler, an economics professor, who makes a great point.
If a business collects data on consumers electronically, it should provide them with a version of that data that is easy to download and export to another Web site. Think of it this way: you have lent the company your data, and you’d like a copy for your own use.
He goes on to offer specific examples of ways in which people would gain significantly from having access to that data if it was in a user-friendly form.
(His comments reminded me of the legal fight by people whose genomes were added to data bases without their consent.)
Senators John Kerry and John McCain (wow, that is an odd couple) have co-authored a bill called the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights, which is good (if it passes), but Thaler says it only addresses privacy and security issues, not useable access.
Both sound like a good idea.
The UK already has both.
US marketers claim that any kind of privacy or data control will affect the economy adversely; I even heard some say that any kind of limitations on the use of data in the US could impair the global recovery.
Pu-leeeze!
If, as Thaler demonstrates, giving useable access to collected data would allow consumers to better evaluate pricing to find the best deal the result would be less smoke and mirrors and (slightly) more authenticity.
It seems to me that would benefit the recovery—at least for those companies that aren’t playing games.
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/4478876573/
