Overview

Safeguarding your customers' privacy and freedom of speech is not only prudent from a legal standpoint, it is also wise business policy. Protecting user rights can generate immediate results as well as build customer loyalty and trust.

With safeguards in place, consumers are likely to spend more online. One study in 2000 found that consumers would spend a total of $6 billion more annually on the Internet if they did not feel that their privacy was on the line every time they made a transaction. In 2008, a study found that 68% of individuals were "not at all comfortable" with companies that create profiles linking browsing and shopping habits to identity. Other research in 2007 found that customers are willing to pay to protect their privacy and calculated the value at approximately 60 cents more per fifteen-dollar item.

Safeguards can also enhance your image and bring customers closer. For example, when Qwest refused to join its fellow telephone companies in disclosing customer information to the National Security Agency, the New York Times noted the positive public reaction, stating, "Companies can't buy that kind of buzz." When Google refused to disclose search records to the United States government and Yahoo! refused to cave to pressure from the French government to ban specific materials from its online auctions, they were feted by the press and the public as privacy and free speech heroes.