Weekly task 4 - Privacy Policies

Privacy policy
Privacy policy is a binding legal document that brings out the ways or at least most of the ways the party uses, manages and reveals the information it has been given or it has gathered while you have been surfing its websites. It likewise reveals how the information is gathered. The applicable laws, regulations and contents of this document are various in different countries and that is why you as a customer or partner of the company should be aware of these.

EU has given a Directive on the Protection of Personal Data to give guidelines to its member countries. This directive helps us to better understand what kind of data is possible to collect inside EU, even though the directives aren’t legally binding before the member countries have transposed into their own national laws. The above mentioned law was taken place latest during 1998 in member countries.

Because the data protection laws in EU and US are different, those standards needed to be integrated. In 2001 those standards in US were integrated together with consultation of EU. These standards must be met not only when operating business inside the EU area but also when company is collecting personal data of EU citizen. This principle is mentioned for companies that operate inside the EU or US and store data of their customers and it is called International Safe Harbor.
These principles must provide:

• Notice - Individuals must be informed that their data is being collected and about how it will be used.
• Choice - Individuals must have the ability to opt out of the collection and forward transfer of the data to third parties.
• Onward Transfer - Transfers of data to third parties may only occur to other organizations that follow adequate data protection principles.
• Security - Reasonable efforts must be made to prevent loss of collected information.
• Data Integrity - Data must be relevant and reliable for the purpose it was collected for.
• Access - Individuals must be able to access information held about them, and correct or delete it if it is inaccurate.
• Enforcement - There must be effective means of enforcing these rules.
(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Safe_Harbor_Privacy_Principles)

These rules are made not only to protect the customers but also the companies. If there is a leak in the security of a company the customers should report that to the company in order to help them to develop their security programs, protocols and to better educate their personnel. When a possible leak takes in place it is good that the company and customer both know what kind of information has been revealed and for what it can be used.

Companies are collecting personal data of their customers for example because they would like to improve their services, give information about their events and in some cases because they would like to personalize their offers to customers. That is likewise one way how they can use that information for marketing and for financial gaining.

Examples of two different privacy policies
We chose the companies H&M and eBay as our examples. H&M is a renowned Swedish fashion company. In addition to fashion for woman, men and children, H&M produce products for shoe fashion and cosmetics. The products from H&M are selling in 2000 stores in over 35 countries. The company uses also the Internet to present the brand and to sell products.

EBay is an American company and employ the world wide biggest auction house. At the beginning of the company the offering was more a consumer-to-consumer market. In recent years the offering changes more and more to a business-to-consumer market. EBay is using by 276 million registered users in 35 nations.

The two companies using the Internet in two different ways: H&M wants to present the brand, give the costumers first impressions about the new collection and communicate the business idea. H&M is not interested in selling the products exclusive over online-shops. The webpage is more an invitation for the costumers to visit the real stores. EBay is only active at the internet: there is no “real” shop for visit. These differences in the companies’ policies are reflected in the privacy policies at the websites:

Contents of the privacy policies
The webpage by H&M can normally used without having an account. But for buying products you have to register yourself at the webpage. The privacy police inform the costumer about which data are necessary and what happened with the data – where the data are saved, how long they are saved and if they will transfer to other third persons. Furthermore they explain why and how they use cookies to improve the website. The private policy is very costumers-orientated, easy to read and you have the feeling that your data are in good hands.

The costumers can also use the eBay webpage without any registration. But then they are not able to buy or sell any products. For becoming a member of the eBay community you have to agree with the private policy and the user’s agreement. If you read the users agreement you will be inform about what you are not allowed to do, e.g. "While using eBay sites, services and tools, you will not:
use our sites, services, or tools if you are not able to form legally binding contracts, are under the age of 18, or are temporarily or indefinitely suspended from using our sites, services, or tools".

The next chapters are about abusing eBay, buyer protection and fees and services. A big point in this case is the liability and indemnity of eBay. With this eBay protect his self because the costumers agree not to make any liability claims against the company. Furthermore eBay controls the course of action if you have a dispute. But that is not all – if you agree with the users agreement you also agree with the following policies:
- Outage policy - http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/everyone-outage.html
- Prohibited and restricted items policy -http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/items-ov.html
- Discussion Boards usage policy -http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/everyone-boards.html
- Listing policy - http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-ov.html
- Investigations- http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/report-trading.html
- Real Estate policy - http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/real-estate.html
- Community content policy (covers Reviews, Guides, Blog Entries, Wiki Articles and Member-Created Product Descriptions) -http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/member-created-content-ov.html
- eBay Groups guidelines - http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/group-guidelines.html
- Rules about intellectual property -http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/intellectual-property-ov.html
- eBay Buyer Protection Policy - http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/buyer-protection.html

The private policies of eBay describe how they handle with the personal information of the costumers. Like H&M they inform the costumers about what data are collected and what happen with the data – if they give the data to third persons and where the information is stored. EBay describes why and how they us cookies and explain what cookies are. Furthermore you have to make sure that you don´t use eBay to send spam’s, viruses or phishing attacks. For choosing a password eBay give some helps how to find a suitable and save password.

3. Differences and customer-orientation
There are huge differences in the private policy from H&M and eBay. H&M inform their costumers about the happening of the personal information. If you read the private policy you have the feeling that H&M tries to win the trust of the costumers and make them feel comfortable by giving personal data. The policy is very clear to the costumers because the terms are very short and understandable. In the “normal” private policy eBay tries to make the same like H&M. The company informed the costumers very well about the incident of the personal information. The privacy policy of the H&M is like a part of the web page, it cab be read quickly and it feels like it is part of the site. Thing, what the consumers should and want to read.

But for having an account at eBay you have to agree also with the users agreement. In this agreement eBay protect themselves against everything. The list of things you have to pay attention is endless and we think no costumer wants to read everything. In this case you as costumer have the feeling it doesn´t matter what happened I have no chance against eBay. Maybe this is also a reason why eBay have these strict rules: they want to awe the costumers e.g. in the case of a dispute? Other difficulties for costumers are the huge amount of links to other policies, which you also have to read if you want to agree. The users agreement are in some parts not very understandable for costumers – we think they confused the costumers more than to help them. In the eBay, the privacy policy is long, and looks like more “official” than the H&M’s one.

H&M is close to the consumer in their privacy policy. They explain what is happening and why and how everything is designed to support the consumer. The eBay tells in a very official way about the privacy policy. Even though they also mention how they think a lot about the consumer, they do it in a very different way than the H&M. For these manners the US maybe affects a lot. H&M’s main office is still in Sweden, and they look at things in very European way. But eBay is an American company, and we all know that in the States, everything has to be clear and complicated in order to protect the company from the consumers.