Privacy Policy Perspectives

Whenever a site asks me to read their privacy policy before entering my info, my immediate reaction is to just skip it, dismiss it as a waste of time. I also get the feeling that they don’t really want me to read it anyway. I know I am not alone in my thinking as Dennis Dayman, contributing to Deliverability.com, addresses this issue among others in his recent blog, “What Marketers Might Expect in 2010”. So why would I do this? Why would I give out my information without understanding who has the right to see and use it? A number of reasons:

1. Privacy policies are never written for consumers to understand. You almost have to be a lawyer to decipher all the phraseology and then apply it to yourself.

2. They are long. I feel like I have better things to do. I just want to get to the part where I’m looking at what I’d wanted in the first place.

3. They tend to be disorganized. It takes my valuable time to scan through and find the specific part of the policy I’m looking for.

4. They aren’t always current…

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