By the Stats: Best Practices in Online Privacy

“Privacy concerns are one of the major obstacles for the next level of adoption of the Web by online customers,” says Terry Golesworthy, president of The Customer Respect Group, a research and consulting firm. The company recently analyzed 464 major corporate Web sites to determine critical trends related to online customer privacy, and then ranked those companies. Here’s what it found:

¥ 23 percent of companies have policies that The Customer Respect Group termed “good” for allowing users to destroy their own information stored in corporate databases.

¥ 42 percent of companies scored”good” on their policies toward sharing of collected personal data.

¥ 64 percent of companies have posted privacy policies that the group scored “good” on clarity and written for optimal customer understanding.

Source: “2005 Privacy Report” from The Customer Respect Group, www.customerrespect.com