Network Vendors Fall Short On Privacy

There's good news and bad news in a recent report on how customers rate networking and telecom vendors when it comes to customer respect.

First the good news: When it comes to interacting with networking and telecom vendors' Web sites, customer respect is at an all-time high.

Now the bad news: Customers are unhappy about how companies guard their privacy at those sites, and justifiably so. The report found that the percentage of networking and telecom companies that share personal data with business partners is 28 percent.

That's far too high. Privacy is top of the list of customer concerns these days, and with good reason, given the avalanche of spam, privacy-invasion, and identity theft spawned by the Internet.

I find it shocking that 28 percent of networking vendors would share personal data with business partners. What in the world are these vendors thinking? They're going to make money on selling hardware, software and services; they're not in the business of selling email lists.Businesses are only hurting themselves by sharing data in this way, by chasing away customers, and losing their trust.

In addition to not sharing data, the vendors should also pledge not to plant intrusive cookies on people's computers when they visit. Cookies that help people personalize the site, or get more out of the site are fine. But they shouldn't use cookies to gather personal information about people, such as their interests and browsing habits.

And, of course, they shouldn't spam as well, and so should never send email unless visitors specifically say they want to receive it.

Smart vendors would do well to make public pledges not to share any data, not to use intrusive cookies, and not to spam. They should use that as a selling point for their hardware and services.

After all, if you can't trust a company with your personal information, are you going to trust them with your enterprise infrastructure?0