Customer data mining: legality and ethics

[mandy]

More than ever, knowingly or unknowingly, consumers disseminate personal data in daily activities. Credit and debit card transactions, ATM visits, Web site browsing and purchases -- even mobile phone use -- all generate data downloaded for analysis and customer profiling. Collectors may use this data to enhance customers' experience, but may also share information with marketers more focused on customer acquisition...

However, news of data breaches and instances of mortgage applicants being categorized as "risky" after the merging of inaccurate credit bureau data with commercial demographic profiles has begun to make consumers aware of the long and intimate practice of data mining. "What's alarming to me isn't the strategies companies are applying for their own benefit, but the large, large companies forming data alliances for someone else's benefit," says Allen Nance, president of e-mail marketing communications and CRM firm Mansell Group in Atlanta...

"If data miners are given free reign on the available personal consumer data, their actions can result in the infringement of privacy and sufferings of the consumers,"...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/jRuUqxWF...Meet.xhtml