With Privacy, Good Intentions Not Enough

Many e-commerce sites still don’t post privacy policies despite government and industry efforts to get them to do so, regulators say.

Federal Trade Commission chief Mozelle Thompson said in an interview at a technology conference in Laguna Niguel last week that businesses must be forthright about how they use information they collect from Web site visitors.

Privacy on the Internet is a growing concern of consumers, and major marketers are taking note. Following IBM’s lead, Microsoft announced last week that it would advertise only on Web sites with privacy policies.

For information about how to develop your own policy, check out the Better Business Bureau privacy page at https://www.bbbonline.com/businesses/privacy/ or create your own policy using the Truste privacy wizard at https://www.truste.org/wizard/.

Having a privacy policy isn’t enough. You have to use it. Case in point: the FTC itself, which has an excellent policy posted prominently at its site (https://www.ftc.gov).

Yet I recently received hundreds of unwanted e-mail messages from the FTC, some containing names, phone numbers and addresses that visitors had entered for use by the FTC staff. A glitch resulted in these messages being transmitted to a mailing list the agency maintains for people interested in privacy issues.

In cyber-privacy, good intentions aren’t enough.

In addition to protecting visitors’ privacy, Thompson said, it’s also important that you use your Web site to present as much information as possible about products or services you sell.

Thompson urges executives to be certain that any product information outlines “what consumers can expect as to how you are going to bill them as well as what can happen if something goes wrong in shipping or with the product itself.”

Thompson’s comments strike me not only as good citizenship, but as good business.

Providing customers with detailed information about what you offer helps in two ways.

* It makes it easier for customers to feel good about buying something, because they know exactly what they’re getting.

* It creates reasonable expectations. For example, if there are limitations on your warranty, service or any other aspect of your offering, make these known upfront.

Be sure you present product or service information in a way that’s palatable. Don’t just print a long, detailed statement like the kind you see on the back of car-rental agreements. Break it up into logical Web pages and link them to the pages that describe your product or service.

You don’t need to make these information pages dazzling. Simple text will do as long as it is clearly written.

And yes, anything you say on your Web page is a commitment, just like any other business or marketing document, so be sure you can back up your page’s claims.

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Technology reports by Lawrence J. Magid can be heard at 1:48 p.m. weekdays on KNX (1070). He can be reached at larry.magid@latimes.com. His Web site is at https://www.larrysworld.com. On AOL, use keyword “LarryMagid.”