Managers prepared to exploit customers’ private data
The Financial Times of 23 June 2008 reports:
Some marketing managers are prepared to give out key private customer data such as sexual orientation, political affiliation and credit card details to third parties in an attempt to increase sales, warns a survey today.
The US-based Ponemon Institute, a privacy research group, also found that almost two-thirds of the marketing professionals it surveyed admitted consumer information had been lost or been stolen over the past two years.
The survey… covered 900 data security and marketing professionals…
Some managers said they would also disclose data about ethnicity and religious beliefs.
…marketing managers never reported data losses or thefts to customers in 90 per cent of cases, as they thought they were not required to do so.
