Privacy policies good for big business, not so good for consumers

Therese L. Williams, lead author of "Protecting Private Information: Current Attitudes Concerning Privacy Policies," was invited to present at the sixth annual Academy of Science and Engineering International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk, and Trust at Harvard.

Using data from an online survey conducted in spring 2014, Williams' research delves into whether attitudes concerning privacy have changed over the last decade.

She says that, as written, privacy policies published by the majority of businesses serve only to protect organizations from sharing or selling consumers' private information to other organizations, but are not readable by the average consumer.

Williams' research suggests that "a new social contract about individuals' private, and supposedly confidential, information should be developed to protect this information, while still allowing the spread of technology and online commerce."

For her research, survey respondents answered such questions as whether they had posted a photo on a social networking site and how often they read privacy policies posted on a business' web page.

Williams said she was rather surprised to find that, compared with research published by Annenberg Public Policy Center in 2005, attitudes regarding privacy have not changed much in the last 10 years.

According to Williams, many consumers do not have a complete picture of the personal information that is aggregated and shared.

Without federal laws to mandate the use of privacy policies or how they are written, multiple industries self regulate. Based on her research, Williams said it is clear that effective self-regulation for consumer privacy has yet to emerge.

Williams is mentored by UALR Associate Professor of Information Science Nitin Agarwal and Distinguished Professor and Maulden-Entergy Chair Rolf T. Wigand, who also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Business Information Systems.