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FEATURE
Privacy ranks as top online ethical challenge
Business ethics has always been a touchy subject for corporate
communications practitioners and their PR firm counterparts. In
today’s digital world, maintaining a high level of business ethics
online is becoming a bigger challenge than ever for the corporate
communications professional.
By Patrick Di Chiro
To be sure, PR professionals had to
contend with plenty of thorny ethical
issues in the old, pre-digital
days. Whether it was financial malfeasance,
sexual harassment, or the propriety
of doing business with foreign dictators,
corporate communicators have never
wanted for things to do when it came to
managing issues and crises related to business
(and personal) ethics.
The media is flooded with news of the
alleged ethical transgressions of Toyota,
not to mention the mightiest of Wall Street
banks, Goldman Sachs, which has been
sued by the SEC.
On the web, however, there is a whole
new set of ethical temptations and landmines
that are posing new, complex challenges
to corporate communicators. I wonder
sometimes if we are sufficiently aware
of these new problems that threaten our
companies and, more importantly, our
consumers, customers and stakeholders. I
also question if we are adequately prepared
to deal with them.
One of the biggest ethical issues facing
companies and organizations today is privacy
online. This is especially true for
web-based companies that frequently
operate with a “Wild West” mentality.
That can lead to online firms treating concerns
like business ethics as an “old
world” problem that does not really apply
to them.
The fact is that web privacy is a massive
and growing problem, one that has caught
the urgent attention of both consumers and
regulators around the world. The emerging
ethical conundrum for corporate communicators
is: Do we call out our companies
and clients on questionable web privacy
practices, or do we just look the other way,
believing this is just how business is done
on the Internet these days
Some companies (most notably
Facebook) have really pushed the limits of
privacy. The company’s CEO, Mark
Zuckerberg, has suggested that people
today (especially those in the younger
cohorts) don’t mind if their information is
shared liberally — and without their
authorization.
A newly released study from UC
Berkeley found that young people are just
as leery about privacy (and sharing too
much of their personal information) as
their parents. The study found that 82% of
respondents 18-24, and 84% 25-34, said
they have refused to provide information
to companies because they felt it was too
private or not necessary. That compares
with 85% of survey respondents over 65
years of age. Virtually the same views on
privacy amongst young and old alike.
There are others who strenuously disagree,
arguing we live in an era where people
happily “over-share” on the web.
Whether it’s what you just bought at the
mall or what bar you are now drinking in,
the argument is that many of us just love
broadcasting to the world every minute
detail of our lives. A crop of new web start
ups (with names like Blippy, foursquare
and Swipely) are now banking on what
they view as this growing comfort level
with little to no privacy.
The business models of these new web
players will likely focus on selling the data
gained from their over-sharing users, and
even taking commissions on sales of products/services
to their friends. One has to
wonder where all of this is going from a
privacy standpoint. It’s easy to imagine
some potential security and ethics-related
train wrecks in the offing.
In April, 10 countries went after Google
because of that Internet giant’s sometimes
sketchy privacy policies. Google shot
itself in the foot a couple of months ago
when it launched its Buzz social networking
product. Google thought it was doing
Gmail users a favor by pre-populating
their Buzz profiles with the names of people
they emailed frequently. It was a serious
privacy breach that Google first tried
to deny and then had to back-peddle on
because of the global avalanche of criticism
it faced.
Here’s a question: Did Google’s corporate
communications team review the new
Buzz privacy policies before the product
was launched If not, it should have done
so. If it reviewed the policies first, then
Google’s corporate communications team
was asleep at the switch.
Clearly, privacy is a big and growing
issue for companies and organizations of
all types and sizes today. Privacy is a ticking
time bomb of business ethics that represents
an historic challenge for corporate
communicators. What matters is that we
try to make sure that our companies and
clients always respect web privacy in
everything they do, so the problems don’t
arise in the first place.
There are other web related ethical
issues that go beyond the critical concern
of keeping personal information private
and secure. A particularly egregious example
relates to the questionable and widely
employed practice of “opt-out” marketing
on the web. Zynga, the fast growing online
gaming company, has been a big abuser of
this aggressive and misleading marketing
approach.
You may recall how Zynga was caught
trapping unsuspecting users into signing
up for expensive subscriptions without
their knowledge. This ethical transgression
also caught Facebook in its undertow,
as Zynga does the majority of its business
on Facebook, pushing games like
Farmville and Mafia Wars. Both Zynga
and Facebook denied any wrongdoing, but
promised to do better in the future.
Corporate communications professionals
cannot just ignore these issues and
hope they disappear. Sure, it’s the company’s
responsibility to stay on the straight
and narrow path with respect to ethical
business practices on the web (and offline,
too). But, a major portion of the onus is
rightly on corporate communications people
(and their PR agency advisors) to
counsel management and clients against
these ethical lapses. That includes convincing
their companies to do the right
thing from square one.
Whether you do strategic communications
for a Fortune 100 company with a
growing web presence, or a start up desperately
scrambling to generate online revenues,
you need to be more aware of
issues like privacy and aggressively
deceptive opt-out marketing practices.
Taking greater responsibility for your
company’s business ethics in the fast moving
digital age is just one more example of
staying true to what may be the most cherished
and consistently relevant of the PR
profession’s Golden Rules: protecting the
overall public good.
Patrick Di Chiro is Founder, Chairman
and CEO of Thunder Factory. He was CCO
of E*TRADE Financial, VP of Global
Technology Marketing for Visa
International, and a Partner at Ketchum.
16
MAY 2010 WWW.ODWYERPR.COM