Customer Privacy is going to be a BIG deal

For those who are interested Microsoft has a document which outlines their customer privacy guidelines. (link)

The core principle driving these guidelines is:

Customers will be empowered to control the collection, use, and distribution of their personal information.

For customers to have control over their personal information, they need to know what personal information will be collected, with whom it will be shared, and how it will be used. In addition:

• Customers must provide consent before any personal information is transferred from their computer.
• If a customer’s personal information is transferred over the Internet and stored remotely, they must be offered a mechanism for accessing and updating the information.

Now as a web server admin/content provider where do I get the tools to enable this? On the client side the tools are even harder to find… Cookies don’t cut the mustard when it comes to empowering customer privacy. However life without them is almost unbearable as I have to keep typing in data.

What’s needed is a simple mechanism that allows the customer to control what he shares. This should be available to the web server at any time it’s needed. It should never be stored on the server. Where this mechanism/tool will be vital is mobile (off-deck) solutions where data entry is a real hassle.

Web sites that abuse customer privacy do so at their own peril. It’s time to get serious about the customer.