Nuts & Bolts - Eye on Privacy : Find Safe Harbor in Privacy Policies

These are just three of the more recent examples I cite time and again with clients about how to take advantage of new business opportunities while still affording consumers the opportunity to choose whether they want to participate.

I believe these examples are instructive to the rest of us searching for ways to operationalize changes that are brought by the prevailing headwinds in this environment.

The Direct Marketing Association’s Guidelines for Ethical Business Practices (Article 38) actually describe the steps necessary to accomplish such updates to an organization’s privacy policy. Here is an excerpt. More details are available in the DMA’s Do the Right Thing compliance booklet:

If your organization’s [privacy] policy changes materially with respect to the sharing of personally identifiable information with third parties for marketing purposes, you will update your policy and give consumers conspicuous notice to that effect, offering an opportunity to opt out.

This kind of proactive communications is good for your business and good for consumers. It is a win-win situation.

These actions also are proof that the industry takes seriously its mandate to self-regulate. As noted by the DMA, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and other trade associations in recent comments on behavioral advertising to the Federal Trade Commission, the industry continues to build on its record of doing the right thing. And that, hopefully, should lead to fewer regulatory/legislative waves, especially in the midst of this economic storm.

Kudos to the hard work of so many of my colleagues who have built up awareness of privacy in the boardroom and on Main Street. Kudos, too, to the International Association of Privacy Professionals for helping nurture the profession’s growth, as well as associations like DMA, IAB and others that provide forums for the exchange of ideas and rules of the road that keep us all well-informed and in line with generally accepted principles and consumer expectations.

Lou Mastria, CIPP, is chief privacy officer and vice president of public affairs at NextAction Corp., a Westminster, Colo.-based provider of cooperative data solutions for multichannel retailers. He can be reached at (908) 363-0983, or by e-mail at lou.mastria@nextaction.net.

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