The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has begun a campaign
to encourage companies to be more up-front about what their privacy
policies mean.
Meanwhile, US consumer regulator the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) has made a similar call for privacy policies and explanations
of personal data use to be improved, making explanations "clear,
concise, consumer friendly and prominent".
The ICO surveyed 2,141 people about their attitudes to the small
print of privacy policies and found that 47% of people believed
that companies deliberately made it hard to read or hard to
understand, and 42% believed that the material only existed to
justify the selling on of personal details.
The ICO is conducting a campaign to encourage companies to be
more clear about how they will treat personal data.
"Privacy notices are an important way to inform individuals and
ensure that organisations are open about how they use personal
information," said Information Commissioner Richard Thomas. "But
no-one should need a magnifying glass or a lawyer to find out what
will happen to their information, what their choices are and what
their rights are. Too many privacy notices are written to protect
organisations, rather than to inform consumers."
The ICO is running a consultation process on a proposed Code of
Practice for companies to follow when publishing their privacy
policies. It said that policies are written in deliberately obscure
language which consumers find hard to understand, and that the
policies are written to protect companies, not to inform
citizens.
It is now conducting a public campaign to encourage consumers to
read the privacy policies attached to services they sign up for,
and to persuade companies to make them easier to understand.
"What chance do people have if privacy notices are written in
complex legalese? How can you make an informed decision without
understanding what you are signing up to?" said Thomas.
"Organisations should only collect the minimum of personal
information and they must explain what they will do with it in
clear, plain language."
The FTC in the US has issued an update to the principles it
wants advertisers to follow when engaging in behavioural
advertising, that is basing advertising on knowledge of someone's
online activities.
FTC consumer protection official Eileen Harrington told the New
York Times that how a website will use information it gathers about
you for advertising is seldom clearly communicated.
"With rare exception, it is not the rule for any web sites to
[make the policies clear],” she said. “It is far more commonplace
for them to put the information in the midst of lengthy and
hard-to-understand privacy policies.”
FTC member Jon Leibowitz said that if web publishers did not
improve then legislation would have to be brought in to force them
to make policies clearer.
Disclaimer: We hope you find OUT-LAW’s content useful. It’s prepared by the lawyers at Pinsent Masons. Please remember, though, that it’s intended as general information only. It’s not legal advice. If that’s what you’re seeking, please
contact us. See also: our
full disclaimer
