Businesses Warned On Privacy Practices

Get cracking on your privacy policy before the government gets cracking on you. That's the message coming out of a Gartner report this week.

According to the analyst firm, U.S. citizens are willing to make privacy compromises in the name of security, but businesses are taking advantage of the situation to launch more aggressive and targeted marketing campaigns, something even more important to businesses in today's down economy. But companies engaging in bad practices could be the next targets for ethics and accountability investigations, and public outcry could lead to government action.

Gartner offers four tips to prevent regulation in this area: Make formal processes to restrict internal access to customer data; proactively implement opt-in permission for marketing; look at existing regulations for specific vertical industries, such as the USA Patriot Act for financial services, for hints at potential legislation for your business; and look at privacy regulations in Europe and Asia as possible templates for U.S. regulations.

Businesses that take such steps, the report says, will either be better prepared should regulations come down or will have a competitive advantage against their peers that do nothing to protect customer privacy.