Forget privacy, here’s something shiny…

A recent experiment found that people don’t really care about privacy on the Internet, so let’s get over ourselves.

So long as you offer people something they want, they’ll happily give up private information. This is according to Upshot, a Chicago-based marketing agency.

Oh, wait, hang on a minute. A marketing agency? Do I scent a whiff of self-interest?

According to this bunch:

“Consumers thought the benefits of personalized services—like deal finding alerts—outweighed their privacy concerns. So when it comes right down to it, as long as programs add value for consumers, they’ll participate.”

In other words, people are stupid.

Any information security professional will tell you that one of the biggest problems with the Internet is that people don’t understand what information they’re giving up, nor its importance. They have no idea how the information could be used against them, not how valuable it is to the likes of marketing agencies.

The press release smugly continues:

“So what does this mean for marketers? You don’t need to be inhibited by over-thinking the privacy issue. Instead, free your creativity…”

In other words, people are too ignorant to know what they’re giving up, so let’s get out there and exploit the crap out of them.

Having a marketing agency explain privacy is like having the Taleban explain women’s rights. Clearly this so-called research is a marketing exercise in itself.

Yes, the report does play lip service to being ‘transparent’ and not abusing customers’ trust. But its message is clear: you can ignore privacy concerns because the people you’re exploiting are too ill-informed to be worried about it.