Last week, June 17th to be exact, the hacktivist group Anonymous took down the Canadian government\u2019s servers, shutting down the whole government\u2019s online presence. The attack came in response to the Bill C-51, which passed the House of Commons and the Senate earlier this year. Some have called the bill a new Canadian version of the Patriot Act and it has raised the question about how much information the various Canadian security services will be mining online.
354% Increase Since 2013
On June 5th 2013, The Guardian released its first article on what would become the NSA surveillance scandal. As the news unfolded a small search engine, DuckDuckGo, saw an upswing in traffic. In fact, a year after publication DuckDuckGo experienced a 166.96% increase in queries per day. That was 2014. Looking at data from this week, the search engine is sitting at ~7 million queries per day, a 350% growth compared to the day of the The Guardian article.
| Date | Direct Search Queries Per Day | Growth Compared To 2013 |
|---|---|---|
| 2012/06/05 | 707,695.24 | -0.54% |
| 2013/06/05 | 1,556,233.55 | 0.0% |
| 2014/06/05 | 4,154,466.21 | 166.96% |
| 2015/06/19 | 7,078,734.96 | 354.86% |
| Source: | DuckDuckGo Direct Queries\u00a0 |
DuckDuckGo sells itself as a search engine that doesn\u2019t track search data and while correlation does not equal causation, the coincidence is strong with this one. We\u2019ve talked about DuckDuckGo before, but only as a comparison to Google\u2019s ability to return accurate results. Instead, because privacy is in the news and on my mind, I think the growth of DuckDuckGo signals a shifting trend: that more internet users are looking for privacy.
Part of the issue is down to consumers being over-trusting. Hands up if you\u2019ve been more annoyed because you have to scroll through the terms and conditions before you can press \u201caccept\u201d, than say, having to accept giving up your personal information just to have an iTunes account? Most people don\u2019t spend too much time thinking about the consequences of clicking that accept button. But I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a good enough reason to ignore privacy concerns. In fact, I suspect that the businesses that take up that mantle will see some interesting results.
Three Ways You Can Help Ensure Customer Privacy
Show and Tell
Simply put, don\u2019t hide anything. Tell your customers what you are doing with their data. And If you track their purchasing history, tell them that too. On all of your online forms, have a small line saying that you promise not to spam or send any unsolicited emails. That\u2019s just a small example, but steps like that are what customers appreciate.
Don\u2019t Default Them into Lists
Email marketing is a great way to connect with customers. However, it\u2019s also tailor-made to annoy customers who don\u2019t want any of it. When someone signs up for your newsletter, they\u2019re interested in your business and products. When someone doesn\u2019t, you might as well be sending spam for all the good it does. Plus who wants to talk to a group of disinterested people? Why not let them choose whether to be in your marketing lists? At least those who opted in are interested.
Don\u2019t Sell Their Information
Just don\u2019t do it. No one really likes telemarketers. Yes, they are doing a job, but it\u2019s how that information found its way onto their desks that is the real problem.
Don\u2019t Be Evil
Tracking customers as if they are tiny social experiments isn\u2019t just unethical, it\u2019s plain creepy. Take the Facebook controversy from a few years ago. The once avant-garde social media website (now platform for Buzzfeed quizzes and lunch-time status updates) was selectively showing different users updates that were either positive or negative. The intent was to measure how such news affected the user, whether negative news from friends made you happy or whether positive news depressed you.
This experiment is exactly what widespread mining breeds. When there are no rules then of course, we\u2019re going to start using the data we\u2019re collecting to see how our customers react and behave.
Instead, when you are open and honest with your customers, explain why you need their email, what you intend to do with it, how you\u2019ll contact them, and then reassure them that you won\u2019t sell it for a quick buck. More often than not, they\u2019ll be okay giving over some personal information if they know what it\u2019s for.
If you\u2019d like to learn more about online privacy, here\u2019s our earlier post on the subject. Also, if you weren\u2019t aware, respecting your customers\u2019 right to privacy is part of any great reputation marketing strategy , to learn more about online reputation marketing here\u2019s our latest post about generating positive reviews online.
What do you think? Is privacy important to your customers? If so how do you go about respecting it? Leave a comment below
