Privacy-Enhanced Personalization

    With the recent news of credit card breaches with Home Depot and Target and the latest iCloud fiasco it is safe to say that there are good reasons why consumers are worried to share their information online. In the article written by Alfred Kobsa it goes in depth about privacy enhanced personalization. As consumers most of us enjoy personalized content, it helps us to narrow down web content to find something that is relevant to our likes and needs.  But how far do vendors go to get our information and what do they do with it, is what makes many consumers nervous to share their information online.

     Kobsa writes that what most users say they are most uneasy about is whether or not their information and purchase records will truly be kept confidential. Other privacy concerns that users had were that their online searches would be recorded and used for unknown purposes and that their inadequate skills would also be recorded. All of these are rational fears; although most information is gathered for research and marketing purposes, consumers fear what they do not know.

     Internet users can be broken down into 3 major groups the Privacy Fundamentalist who generally are very concerned, The Privacy Unconcerned who generally only express mild concern and the Privacy Pragmatists who are somewhat concerned. This article also concludes from surveys that people are generally most apprehensive about the things that they are ashamed of or hold secretive getting out. As we are all aware though many sites do indeed use or web history to personalize to our taste. Facebook is primarily one site that does this, if you pay attention many times what you search for in say Google, will pop up on your timeline. Is this too intrusive? I believe it is simply apart of personalization. Should Internet sites be required to tell consumers how their information is being used? 94% of people think they should because without this knowledge they do not feel comfortable sharing their data because they do not trust the site. Trust is an important factor for disclosure, along with positive past experience, design and operation of a website, privacy statement and reputation of the web site operator.

    So is this invasion of privacy worth personalization.  Some could argue both ways sure I do enjoy amazons recommendation but what other information are they sharing of mine. This practice has been going on for years, cards that you get from grocery stores such as the MVP card has your address in the system so that every time you scan your card they can keep track of purchases. Is this worth it?