On-line Privacy Notices "Unenforceable"

As we are dealing with privacy issues as part of a current XIST project I am reminded of a note I wrote last year.

A U.S. court has ruled that even if a company (Northwest Airline in this case) breaks it's own privacy policy there is little that can be done about it. As we design websites we tend to bury the 'important notices' assuming that nobody reads them anyway. It turns out that this means that nobody reads them. To quote from the decision:

"Although Northwest had a privacy policy for information included on the Web site, plaintiffs do not contend that they actually read the privacy policy prior to providing Northwest with their personal information," Magnuson noted. "Thus, plaintiffs' expectation of privacy was low."

Read the article on the news.com site.