As I lawyer, I often write privacy policies for customers, and I certainly recommend them whenever clients are collecting information. Most of the time these policies are for website where - not surprisingly - information must be collected in order to provide a service. For example, my internet hosting client can’t provide hosting without a name, contact information, and a credit card. Another client can’t take orders for product without much the same information.
That said, the increasing collection of data under the guise of providing “the service(s) or carry out the transaction(s) you have requested or authorized,” is quite disconcerting. Now, perhaps you’re thinking that I cribbed that statement from an online service such as Amazon or some sophisticated cloud application, but I didn’t. Nope, that’s from the “Open XML File Format Converter for Mac Privacy Statement,” and is for a small Microsoft utility which enables those of us who are too cheap to upgrade their old version of Word to open newer Word files.
Now, the “service(s)” I’ve requested are pretty limited, in that I just want to open files in Word, a package I bought (sorry, licensed) some time ago. That’s it - I’m opening a file, resident on my computer, using software which is also resident on my computer. I can’t think of any information they need to collect which they don’t already have, and certainly nothing which I have authorized.
More importantly, I find it disturbing that they are collecting any information at all, particularly as an attorney with confidentiality obligations. Information collected is also information which can be subpoenaed, revealed by mistake, or read by some wayward employee looking to make a fast buck.
My words of wisdom? As an online or offline business, if you don’t need information, don’t collect it, and if you think you do, then think again in case you don’t. And as a consumer, if you don’t like a vendor collecting information about you, switch vendors.
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