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Word salad: Bad for privacy, Australian report shows

While transparency is touted as the “best” word for businesses to use to assure customers their privacy is being carefully tended to, customers would do well to look to a business’s privacy policy for the real truth about the relationship.

A report from Australia’s Consumer Policy Research Centre and the University of New South Wales shows where the pitfalls are. A key problem for survey participants was they didn’t understand much of the policy terminology often used, including ‘pseudonymised information’ (81%), a ‘hashed email address’ (74%), or an ‘advertising ID’ (67%). Sadly, this is often not accidental, as many companies use complex, dense and unfamiliar language in privacy policies in the hope customers will resign and sign, rather than demand clear explanation.