Government to spy on every call and email

Is there a worse way to spend £12bn than this?

Contrasting Problems…

I would not even attempt to keep up with the wonderful job the Open Rights Group is doing of providing running commentary on Discgate.

But I would like to compare and contrast the 3 main privacy ‘scandals’ of the last few weeks in order to show the need to manage the problem at both overall level, and at specific component level.

To do so i’ve completed a ‘remote’ Trust Index assessment of Facebook, Sky TV and HMRC.; remote = that which I can assume or glean from outside the organisation.

The three scores are shown below:

Facebook

Sky TV (UK)

HMRC

As we see, this exercise shows that the organisations that organisations may score broadly the same on The Trust Index – but have significantly differing dynamics within that score.

Beyond that, we should not that scores below 50% on the index are poor anyway. Unless organisations are scoring a minimum on 75% on the index then they are not trying hard enough and are allowing other business factors to override their respect for the personal data of their customers .

Some Useful Research

Here’s some useful input from Experian; we’ll be looking to take this down several evels of detail with The Trust Index over the next few months.

Consumer threat to blacklist unsecure brands

The majority of UK consumers have threatened to go out of their way to spread brand-owners data protection failings, following a sharp rise in firms failing to keep personal information.

According to a new study by creditexpert.co.uk how businesses store and use personal data is a crucial factor in whether a person is likely to buy from an organisation or not.

Sixty-five per cent of respondents in the survey claim they would not buy again from a company that did not keep their personal information absolutely safe.

The survey also found that car dealers are the organisation consumers are least likely to trust – 46 per cent of respondents would not rely on them to keep personal data safe, closely followed by insurance and Internet companies.