What’s Wrong With Online Privacy Policies

As technologies available for collection and analysis of Webdata have become more elaborate, data privacy concernsamong Internet users have grown. In particular, they worrythat Web merchants sell customer data to third parties, clogtheir mailboxes with unsolicited email, place persistentcookies on their PCs or enable third parties to do so [10]. To protect their privacy, users abort transactions, falsify personal details, or maintain several email accounts. Such practices deprive Web mer-chants of information critical to meeting customer needs and sustaining a competitive advantage [3]. To encourage users to participate in online transactions, Web merchants must ease people’s concerns about data misuse. To earn users ’ trust, a Web site should make it explicit that customer data is treated in a fair and responsible manner [4]. It has therefore become common practice for Web merchants to post privacy policies on their Web sites to inform users about Research has shown that privacy policies tend to intensify privacy concerns rather than engender trust. One way to combat this dichotomy is to redesign their content, language, and presentation format