Blog Assignment 4

It’s no secret that users like personalized content.  They like it whenever they visit a site, it’s different in a small way every time.  Good examples of this are amazon.com, who has personalized findings for suggested products on the home page every time you visit, and also news websites.  Often you can subscribe to certain types of news (tech, world, health, etc) that that content will appear on your home page.  The difficult and touch part of being able to create personalized content is the fact that you need to collect consumer information before you can do so.  An example provided in the article is about personalized digital tutoring, and how the student may not want the programmers knowing what skills they lack.  

There three classifiable groups on the privacy debate.  There are the privacy fundamentalists, who oppose all disclosing of information online, or in other physical settings.  The opposite side is the privacy unconcerned, who only express mild concern about their information.  Privacy pragmatists are what we’d consider “moderate” if we were to equate this situation to a political spectrum.  They have concern over their information, but are typically more understanding (and possibly more educated) about where their information is going, and why it’s being collected.

Attitudes about collected information can obviously change though, depending on the type being collected.  People are usually okay with disclosing basic demographics and lifestyle information such as hobbies.  Generally, less people disclose details about their “internet behavior and purchases”.  Financial details (credit card info, etc) is among the least disclosed types of information along with social security details.

The best things you can do to collect private information that will benefit your site include: having a privacy statement, having a clean and dignified looking website, as well as having a clean reputation.  A privacy statement (or policy) basically states what you do with consumer information, and how it would benefit their experience.  Having a clean website, and clean reputation simply let the user (either subconsciously or consciously) feel more comfortable while using your website.

The question I propose about privacy is this:

Where do we draw the line? In an ever increasing digital age, how can we find out where the balance is between the amount of user information we collect and benefits to user experience?