This is for all the little old ladies who are still afraid of their VCR, and for the conspiracy theorists who think black helicopters circle their house. There\u2019s no doubt, there is an enormous amount of personal information about you on the Internet, in\u00a0public records\u00a0and in a thousand databases across the globe.<\/p>\n
One bastion of personal information is\u00a0Facebook, which has more than 900 million active users who self-disclose details such as their full name, age, employer, hobbies and political affiliation. To allay concerns about Internet privacy, Facebook enables its members to select their own privacy settings, although the site\u2019s default settings often remain public (Facebook page administrators can\u2019t view data that you make private). As such, Internet privacy policies designed to protect users aren\u2019t fail-safe against hackers, or users\u2019 own lack of knowledge about or\u00a0application\u00a0of them.<\/p>\n
However, with risk comes reward. For all the flak Internet privacy gets, there are many benefits and perks for consumers who educate themselves and opt-in, says Al DiGuido, former CEO of Zeta Interactive and Epsilon Interactive, and former publisher of\u00a0Computer Shopper<\/em>\u00a0magazine.<\/p>\n From targeted ads to\u00a0coupon\u00a0savings on your favorite products, savvy marketers are using your social media profiles and activities to build brand engagement and gain your ultimate loyalty.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cThe goal of any marketer trying to build a solid relationship with a customer is focused on leveraging profile data to provide their consumer with the most relevant information possible,\u201d DiGuido says. \u201cWe have all seen numerous examples of marketers who will send us offers via email that have no contextual relevance to our preferences and\/or behavior characteristics. Yet\u00a0study\u00a0after study has validated that consumers desire relevancy in their messaging from brands.\u201d<\/p>\n Social media profile marketing relies on your \u2018Likes\u2019 to deliver brand-related content. When a Facebook user \u201cLikes\u201d their favorite clothing brand or local clothing boutique, they establish a two-way relationship. For the consumer, they get an inside look at new products in stores, upcoming sales and special\u00a0discounts. The retailer, in turn, learns more about their customers\u2019 age range, gender and geographic location. They both engage in real-time market research, where consumers can give instant feedback to brands and retailers can react to current events and trends with their fans.<\/p>\n With that said, the clothing store Gap isn\u2019t looking at your Facebook wall to see what you did last weekend. However, a small boutique with a close relationship with its customers can look at a fan\u2019s public profile and see that she\u2019s recently become engaged and would likely be looking for dresses in the coming months for engagement parties, receptions and rehearsal dinners. That smart marketer isn\u2019t going to flood her inbox with \u201cCongratulations! Come shop now!\u201d messages, but might offer its personal shopping services or after-hours dress-fitting appointments for their best customers, like her.<\/p>\n Consumers have little time to waste in their communication, DiGuido says. \u201cThe promise of the Internet has always been the ability to \u2018get more done\u2019 in a shorter period of time. Consumers now expect that marketers will have learned about them through their interaction with the brand and will provide a more relevant and efficient communications dialogue moving forward.\u201d When done right, marketers can leverage\u00a0Big Data\u00a0to provide you with offers and information that truly match your needs.\u00a0(Read more about Big Data and its benefits for small businesses on SUCCESS.com.)\u00a0<\/p>\n * You should NEVER provide Personal Identifiable information online to a brand that you don\u2019t trust implicitly.<\/p>\n * Consult the privacy policies of all brands with whom you have relationships and make sure you read the parts that deal with privacy and security of your data and how the brands will deal with this information.<\/p>\n * Opt-out of a brand\u2019s privacy policies that make you uncomfortable and reconsider your business relationship. If their privacy policy doesn\u2019t seem above board, might that be representative of their entire operation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is for all the little old ladies who are still afraid of their VCR, and for the conspiracy theorists who think black helicopters circle their house. There\u2019s no doubt, there is an enormous amount of personal information about you on the Internet, in\u00a0public records\u00a0and in a thousand databases across the globe. One bastion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[244],"tags":[245,246,247,248,249,250,251],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-success","tag-big-data","tag-big-data-conference-2011","tag-big-data-sets","tag-database","tag-gigaom-big-data","tag-large-data-sets","tag-nyt-big-data"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
DiGuido\u2019s Tips for Reviewing Privacy Policies<\/h3>\n