Mind Your Manners: Consumers Expect Identity Etiquette

"We forget that throughout the day, every day, we are broadcasting our whereabouts," said Amy Webb, CEO of Webbmedia Group, a Baltimore-based digital strategy agency in a recent article for NPR’s All Tech Considered. "We are being recorded, identified, scanned, compared to other databases for various things. We are under constant surveillance.”

Consumers understand that companies are gathering information about them and sharing or selling it, but they expect service providers to treat their information with respect and to show “Identity Etiquette.” The increase in mobile and tablet computing means that consumers are shopping, sharing, liking and posting -- all while on the move. This data is invaluable to marketers who are struggling to adapt to the mobile advertising landscape. They’re looking for every advantage they can get to increase their “stickiness” with the mobile shopper.

But consumers care quite a bit about how all this collected data is used. A recent excerpt from a Compass Intelligence Report shows that 62 percent of consumers expect companies to ask permission, in one way or another, before using digital information. This includes marketing messaging from on-screen banner ads or targeted ads via email or mobile device. Many of the respondents to the study stated that they would like to determine what, if any, of their data is shared. This especially targets companies that are looking to turn a profit by sharing or selling their customers’ identity data to others.

According to the report, customers understand that the information they provide on Facebook, Twitter, or Google is sold to advertisers and that it can be aggregated with other data and put up for sale. But customers want control; 43 percent say they would “think better of and/or be thankful to companies” that give them control of how their digital information is shared. Acceptable “Identity Etiquette” includes asking what data could be shared, informing customers as to which third parties the data would be shared with, and the ability to change data or revoke access to it at any time.

Giving customers these options would simply be good Identity Etiquette for companies to practice, and would result in more trust in a company and less of the “creep out” factor that many consumers currently feel. But companies worry that if they give customers the chance to opt out, they will – and 38 percent of survey respondents did say that they would turn off data sharing access. And yet, how easy is that to do? The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is struggling to gain consensus around a Do Not Track standard. Some kind of identity data is required for every purchase, registration or download, and behavior such as disabling cookies is time-consuming and often interferes with the kind of seamless experience that consumers prefer. Ultimately, human beings are shown to be rather lazy about protecting their online privacy, no matter what they say to the contrary.  

However, the Compass Intelligence survey findings indicate that customers really want more control over how and when their data is used. By practicing the right kind of Identity Etiquette, companies will build consumer trust and ultimately get better, more realistic data from their customers. Personalized websites and advertising can improve customer experience as well as benefit the company’s bottom line, and giving consumers transparency into the data collected and the choice over how it will be used could result in greater personalization, and ultimately greater sales.

The first move is up to companies. By following a few outliers like Mozilla and Twitter, who are showing their respect for user privacy with Do Not Track options, companies can differentiate themselves and offer a more transparent experience to consumers, giving them the choice and control they want – and deserve.