Companies, Ethics, and Privacy of Personal Information Essay -- Privac

IntroductionPersonal data is quickly becoming a goodness in todays high technology world. This information is used by banks, investment and brokerage companies, credit card merchants, government agencies (local, state and federal), and consumer product-based companies. or so people in all likelihood dont realize the amount of information thats shared between companies, or how often its done. Many companies sell and share customer data to help sell products and check out what new products they should produce. Other uses include gathering information about inventory levels to help better determine what types of products are bought at which store, when and how often. This can be used for inventory and production, to make sure that the store (or stores for chains, like Safeway and Longs Drugs) can collapse the products available when theyre needed.However, the same personal data is being compromised and eroding privacy. Companies have been getting bolder in their attempts to gather, share and sell data. The latest trend is outsourcing data to third party companies for data processing, which can be done at a lower cost. One of the main problems with this approach is that a lot of very sensitive data is being sent, which could be harmful in the wrong hands. Most companies require their customers to opt-out to prevent their data from being shared with a companys affiliates. This process requires the customer to explicitly tell the company not to share their data, which is usually in the form of a web site or a survey sent in the mail. These surveys are often thrown away by consumers, so they dont even realize that theyre giving the companies a green light to sell and share their data. Theres a new movement starting to grow, whe... ...nstitution Policy Brief 29, February 1998.http//www.brook.edu/comm/policybriefs/pb029/pb29.htm17 Simon Davie,atomic number 63 to U.S. No privacy, no trade, Wired - Issue 6.05. May, 1998http//www.wired.com/wired/6.05/europe.html18 Sw edish Personal Register Law, recent changeshttp//www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/society/personal-register-law.htmlrecentchanges19 Declan McCullagh, US Twitchy on EU data Privacy, Wired News, October 16, 1998http//www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/15671.htmlSuggested Online resourcesPrivacy International - http//www.privacyinternational.org/Internet Privacy - http//www.netatty.com/privacy/US Department of Health and gentle Services, Office for Civil Rights (HIPAA) - http//www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/ Electronic Privacy Information Center - http//www.epic.org/Privacy 2000 - http//www.privacy2000.org/