I find your articles interesting and I can’t help but respond. Your last two paragraphs are quite intriguing. You actually wouldn’t mind someone you don’t know using your personal information to get you to buy their product, perhaps without you even knowing you are being taken advantage of? Sounds like offering a drink to an alcoholic. Your personal response follows an ends justifies the means mentality so long as you agree with the ends.

I have yet to find a retailer I would trust with this information, let alone one who would “probably” keep to the right side of the moral question.

I agree with Justin and Dan, best case it would have to be an opt-in scenario.

Call me a pessimist or a realist.

Regards,
Ted

It’s early days but retailers are warning to this as a strong data set they can put together with their internal CRM systems.

And Dan – it’s opt in because it’s in a community people choose to join and it’s aggregated so that there is no personal information.

Justin

Thanks for the great article. I appreciate your excellent coverage of these issues. However, there are many more questions around privacy and morality in the scenarios you describe.

For one, will this be “opt-in” or the default experience that is mandatory (or perhaps listed on page 17 in small print of the terms of use) for a website? I suggest that unless this becomes a well-defined opt-in situation, privacy advocates will rightly protest.

There is another approach which would answer the privacy and morality question and actualy help families rather than tempting emotions. What if one could opt-in to “surf your values” and base the CRM on values and pre-defined preferences as well as behavior? In my view, this is the right answer – not targeting users emotions. I describe this approach in detail in chapters 9 & 10 of my new book, Virtual Integrity.