P ERSONAL I NFORMATION By: Shana Adams

W HAT TYPE OF INFORMATION MAY BE SHARED BETWEEN COMPANIES ABOUT YOU ? 1.Credit Score/Buying Habits 2.Home Address 3.Name 4.DOB (Date of Birth) 5.Home phone Social Security Number Passwords/Usern ame *Information that YOU provide to companies that may be hacked into.

W HAT A RE Y OUR R IGHTS ? By now, most companies have privacy policies in place stating that the consumer has the right to keep his information private and can choose what he wants to share. However, companies can share whatever information they want to share. According to “(companies) do not have much of a vested interest in protecting your personal information…Other than if the media finds out, there really is no motivation for a company to really protect your information” In other words folks, READ THE FINE PRINT!.

N EED P ROOF ? The following comes from and it shows just how “safe” personal information is on the web. This titanic slip-up should have NEVER happened. “For just a few hours, Italian citizens were able to see how much their friends, neighbors, colleagues and bosses declared as taxable income. In early May, officials from Italy's outgoing centre-left government published the tax records of some 38 million Italians for the 2005 fiscal year on the official website of Italy's tax office.”

HOW DO I PROTECT MYSELF AND HOW CAN BUSINESSES PROTECT ME ? The following guidelines for protecting personal information was found on Some of the tips include: Look for privacy policies on the web Get a separate account for personal Teach your kids that giving out personal information online means giving it to strangers Make sure that online forms are secure Encrypt your Opt-out of third party information sharing Extra! Use common sense Businesses should have stricter privacy policies in place that gives the consumer much more protection than what is offered now. As explained in the third slide, most consumers are screwed because they do not read the fine print. I believe that businesses should be wary of the way that they handle personal information because mismanagement can come by to bite…HARD. *This reflects my opinion and in no way represents the class.

WHAT IS PROFILING AND HOW IS IT DONE? According to ?page=lp_upload&pos=1 Profiling is: “ creating a picture of your customer based on key demographic variables (for consumers this could be age or income, for businesses this could be sales volume or number of employees). Profiling allows you to identify the common characteristics of your best customers. With this information you can develop a target profile for new customers.” I believe that the danger in profiling could be making assumptions about individuals based on things other than knowing the individual directly. I believe that people don’t take to kindly to others making generalizations about their character. *This is my opinion and it does not reflect upon the opinions of the class.

W ORKS C ITED CDT. "Getting Started: Top Ten Ways to Protect Privacy Online." CDT Guide to Online Privacy Nov Josh. "Top 10 Problems with Sharing Personal Information Online." The Been Verified.com Blog. 04 Aug Nov "Taxman tells all." The Florentine 15 May 2008: 1+.