Shopper Secrets

"The U.S. system with regard to privacy is not working," says Marc Rotenberg in a New York Times article by Natasha Singer (5/2/10). Marc is president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and his point is that, unlike financial data, American consumers have no way of gaining access to their shopping data. The situation is different in the U.K., where shoppers can take "advantage of a data protection law … that requires public agencies and private businesses to release a person’s data file upon his or her written request."

David Bond, a London-based filmmaker made such a request and received "a phonebook-thick printout from Amazon.com listing everything he ever bought on the site; the addresses of every person to whom he had ever sent a gift; and even the products he perused but did not ultimately buy. He also received a file from his bank, including a transcript of an irate phone call he once made after the bank lost one of his checks. The transcript noted that he seemed angry and raised his voice."

David points out that when consumers are taped "for training and quality assurance purposes," the recordings could end up in their files. In today’s "post-privacy society" we not only "have lost track of how many entities are tracking us" but also "what they are doing with our personal information, how they are storing it, whom they might be selling our dossiers to and, yes, how much money they are making from them." Perhaps some hope ahead: The F.TC. plans to introduce "comprehensive new privacy guidelines intended to provide greater tools for transparency and better consumer control of information" this fall.