The web can be a great way for businesses like mine (insurance) to communicate with existing and potential customers but there are risks as well as rewards. I bought this book after the company I work for sent out a message to several thousand customers and cc'd everyone on the list! Fortunately the message was fairly innocuous, but it was still a scary wake up call (the person who sent the message had not even been trained on how to use email properly). I pointed out to my boss that we could have ended up like Eli Lilly, having to explain ourselves to government regulators.
The author has clearly had real world experience helping companies deal with things like this. He explains the 'privacy players' and the risks that companies face when they make mistakes, but without preaching. His whole perspective is that consumers want privacy so getting privacy right is smart business. Besides examples of what can go wrong, he also points out what can go right (like the bank that literally makes millions from their respect for privacy). I can recommend this book to anyone who works with customer data.
The web can be a great way for businesses like mine (insurance) to communicate with existing and potential customers but there are risks as well as rewards. I bought this book after the company I work for sent out a message to several thousand customers and cc'd everyone on the list! Fortunately the message was fairly innocuous, but it was still a scary wake up call (the person who sent the message had not even been trained on how to use email properly). I pointed out to my boss that we could have ended up like Eli Lilly, having to explain ourselves to government regulators.
The author has clearly had real world experience helping companies deal with things like this. He explains the 'privacy players' and the risks that companies face when they make mistakes, but without preaching. His whole perspective is that consumers want privacy so getting privacy right is smart business. Besides examples of what can go wrong, he also points out what can go right (like the bank that literally makes millions from their respect for privacy). I can recommend this book to anyone who works with customer data.