News Websites: A Little Privacy Please?
News web sites want too much of my personal information in return for access to their online news. I'm specifically talking about the online versions of The Press-Enterprise (http://www.pe.com/) and The Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/). The one that seems to do it right is The Orange County Register (www.ocregister.com).
Do you really need my first name, last name, street address and phone number just to show me some news?
The Press-Enterprise
They state on their Why Register page:
By having you register, we are able to better target our advertisers' messages, thus improving the effectiveness of their ads.
So, go ahead and ask my gender, year of birth, city, zip code, and interests. But why do they require my first name, last name, street address (instead of just city, zip code), and phone number?
Equally annoying, I have to opt-out of (by un-checking an already-checked option box) email notification of special discounts and offers.
The L.A. Times
In order to register, they, too, required my first name, last name, street address, and phone number. They have an interesting explanation for this on the registration form:
Your address and phone number are required below so we can identify whether or
not your account will receive additional newspaper subscriber benefits in
the future.
Huh?
L.A. Times Gets Worse
It appears as though they've done the user-friendly thing by allowing you to opt-in for all the email stuff: all the boxes are unchecked, which typically means "no, thank you". But, on the last box, you actually need to check the box to NOT receive unaffiliated advertiser emails!!! It works opposite of the other boxes on their form! Was that unintentional or do you think they were counting on users to not read the form carefully? I was able to correctly indicate my preference by modifying my profile and that's when I found an additional option box allowing me to opt-out of all commercial email. That's a nice option to have but it's suspiciously missing on the original registration form.
The Orange County Register
Ahh. Some privacy at last. On their registration form, my name and phone number are optional and they don't even ask for my address! The other nice thing: they say at the very top of their registration form that they won't share my information. The Press-Enterprise and The L.A. Times (to a lesser degree) sent me off to wade through their privacy policies to discover the fate of my personal info.
Lesson
Perhaps the L.A. Times and the Press-Enterprise are big enough to lose my respect without missing a wink of sleep. Your small business can't afford to thumb your nose at customers:
don't require users to provide information that you don't really need just because you have the opportunity to collect it
- don't give vague reasons for wanting specific information
- don't use your privacy policy as a way to hide information, assuming people won't bother to read it
- don't automatically sign users up for additional stuff and make them have to opt-out
- don't ever use shady tactics on people you want business from--it's not worth it
