Passage Comment

Comment on each passage of the companies about their privacy policies and relate to Information System.

– 150 words on each passage

 

– I want this within 10 hours.

Harley-DavisonPassage

Reading the chapter on privacy and how customers information are used, open my mind to how we (customers) have no privacy at all. I viewed numerous businesses privacy policies and they all seem to follow the same paths on the usages of customer’s information. I looked at Harley-Davidson Inc. and the privacy policies; I found the format similar to Apple Computer, Inc. Harley-Davidson Inc. This beloved motorcycle company, shares your information in the same realm as most of the companies today, in our computer induced era.

Harley-Davidson Inc. collects and stores your personal information; information may include your name, email address, postal address, phone number, credit card number, gender, birthday, or personal interests. Harley-Davidson maintains a record of your product interests and the purchases customers make online, on the phone, or in the stores. Information collected may be combined with information they acquire from joint marketing partners or other unrelated third parties.

The data is utilized for many purposes; this is how the company uses customer’s data:

•To personalize and enhance your experiences when you interact with Harley-Davidson

•To enable Harley-Davidson to provide you with the highest quality experiences, products, services and motorcycles

•To process and fulfill your orders, which includes sending you emails to confirm your order status and shipment

•To communicate with you and send you information by email, postal mail, telephone (including autodialed or pre-recorded call), text message, or other means about our products, services, contests, and promotions, unless you have directed us not to contact you with promotional communications

•To administer contests and promotions, and to respond to your requests

•To help us learn more about your motorcycle and retail preferences

•To help us manage and improve our websites, events, experiences, products and services

•To update you on membership programs, benefits and services, and to enhance your membership experience

•To enhance your ownership experience

•To contact you if necessary, including by autodialed or pre-recorded call

The circumstances in which Harley-Davidson provides customer’s information to third parties are; the company may share personal information within Harley-Davidson throughout the world to assist the company in providing personalized experiences, as well as offering products or services that may interest customers and to process online orders and other requests. Harley-Davidson also shares information with their independent dealers and Harley-Davidson Financial Services throughout the world.

Harley shares customer’s information with non-affiliated companies that provide services to customers on their behalf. Harley states they “take steps to ensure that these companies are contractually obligated to keep the personal information that we provide to them confidential and to use such information only as we permit.” The company also says that they may share customer’s information with non-affiliated companies that market Harley-Davidson branded products and services, or in connection with the companies’ financial obligations concerning a Harley-Davidson product or service. These companies have their own privacy practices and notices on how they store your information, which to me is alarming.

There are also moments where Harley has to disclose your personal information, which I understand; In order to cooperate with law enforcement, Harley states they have to disclosed your information “to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against any legal claims, or when we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or respond to suspected illegal activities, fraud, or to protect the safety, rights, or property of you, us, or a third party.”

The potential privacy issues that may arise for customers of Harley-Davidson is the missed used of the information collected, and due to the fact the company shares information with non-affiliated companies and claims they take steps to ensure that those companies follow the contractual obligations, to me is an issues. Harley has and relies on the loyalty of its customers, and I am sure they are loyal to their customers as well; but how can they insure me that non-affiliated companies are not improperly using the information. If your information was improperly used, how would you know which company was the culprit; when your identity is stolen, there are no traces that take you back to the exact point at which your information was retrieved. Basically we are in a world now where anything can happen, and you now have to just hope your information is not missed used.

Facebook collects data that you willingly provide on your page, as well as the information your friends provide. The amount of information it stores on each person is beyond comprehension. This includes your demographics, your location by gps if you use your phone, photos, likes/interests through statuses, when photos of you were tagged and by who, if you visited a website that uses Facebook as a platform, and when etc. They also receive data from partners, affiliates, advertisers, and other third parties about what ads you click on and how you respond to them.

Facebook Passage

Facebook uses your location to let you know of things happening nearby. Your demographics allows Facebook to be more personalized, such as the gender allowing Facebook to properly address you by Ms. or Mr. Your gps location is used to inform you of things happening nearby. This information is generally discarded after it is no longer relevant. The information gathered about how you respond to advertisement or the websites you visit is used to personalize the advertisements you see around your page. Facebook will also make suggestions for applications based on the ones you are already currently using, such as the games you play. All of the data stored by Facebook is used internally for things like analysis, troubleshooting, research, and improvements to Facebook.

Data is not provided to third parties unless your have given Facebook your permission, it is clearly stated in the privacy policy, or they have removed your name from the information. Any other circumstance would prevent Facebook from sharing your information with third parties.

There are always privacy issues when dealing with a social networking website. We have the option to choose what information is made public but how do we know that this is not really being shared? I think that there is way too much information sharing about what websites we visit and personalizing advertisements to that. At some point this information sharing is going to be taken a bit too far amongst companies. It is slightly creepy that every website I go to knows my personal likes and dislikes or what I have recently shopped for online from a website entirely separate from the one I am on. I can see this creating a lot of lawsuits soon and a lot of people protesting this. How much more are they tracking?

Amazon Passage

1.) Customer data that Amazon.com collects and stores includes anything entered into the Website or provided in any other way. This includes all information involved when a customer searches for a product, participates in discussion boards, bids on a product, buys a product, participates in a questionnaire or contest, compiles wish lists or other gift registries, rates and provides product reviews, or communicates with customer service through phone, e-mail, or chat. Specific information can include the customer’s name, phone number, address, credit card, people to whom purchases have been shipped, e-mail addresses of friends, a personal description and photograph, and financial information, including driver’s license number and Social Security number. Everything inputted into any field while using Amazon.com is used and stored by the customer.

Other information Amazon.com collects and stores includes the Internet Protocol (IP) address used when connecting a customer’s personal computer to the internet, login information, browser type and data, including cookies, flash cookies, version, time zone setting, and browser plug-in types/versions, operating system/platform, purchase history, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain web pages, page interaction information, including scrolling and clicks, and physical location when using mobile devices. Lastly, Amazon.com can receive information about you from other sources or websites and add it to your account information. This could include updated delivery and address information from their carriers or other third parties, account information, purchase or redemption information, search results and links, credit history information from credit bureaus, and page-view information from some merchants. A customer can sometimes choose not to provide certain information; however, the customer may not be able to take full advantage of some of the features Amazon.com has to offer.

2.) The information Amazon.com collects and stores is used in a variety of ways. The majority of the information is used to personalize and continually improve the customer’s experience while visiting Amazon.com. Information can be used to respond to customer requests or inquiries, customizing future shopping through recommendations or related products, improving the Amazon.com store, communicating with the shopper, and providing the customer with location-based services such as advertising and search results when a location is provided. Amazon.com uses cookies to enable their systems to recognize the customer’s devices (computer, mobile device, etc.) to provide store features, including 1-Click purchasing, personalized advertisements, Recommended for You, add items to the customer’s shopping cart, proceed to checkout, or use any other features on Amazon.com that require customer login. Financial information from credit bureaus is used to detect and prevent fraud, or is used to offer credit or financial services to its customers. Information from other sources is used to correct Amazon.com’s records or add it to the customer’s account information to deliver its products to customers easier.

3) Amazon.com only shares its customer information as described in their privacy notice, last updated on April 6, 2012, with any subsidiaries of Amazon.com, Inc, and co-branded or joint offers with other companies. Some examples of the business in which Amazon.com offers joint or co-branded products are Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, American Apparel, OfficeMax, Starbucks, Eddie Bauer, PacSun, and J&R Electronics. Amazon.com employs other third party companies and individuals to perform actions on their behalf for specific purposes, including fulfilling orders, delivering packages, removing repetitive information from customer lists, sending postal mail and e-mail, analyzing data, providing marketing assistance, processing credit card payments, providing search results, and providing customer service, but they may not use it for other purposes. Sometimes Amazon.com will send offers to select customers on behalf of other businesses, but when they do this, they do not provide names or addresses. When Amazon.com buys or sells stores, subsidiaries, or business units, customer information is usually one of the transferred assets, but is subject to any promises made in any pre-existing privacy notice. Amazon.com will also release account or other personal information when it is believed it is appropriate to comply with the law, protect the rights, property, and safety of Amazon.com, or to enforce or apply their conditions of use and other agreements. Lastly, Amazon.com will provide information when given consent by a customer.

4) Because any and all data can be and is collected by Amazon.com, I only see a few areas in which potential privacy issues may arise for its customers. I’m sure a large percentage of Amazon.com’s customers are having their information sent out without them really knowing it. If more customers read Amazon.com’s privacy notice, I would imagine that more customers would opt out from giving more information than needed other than to just place an order. There are many privacy settings that customers can adjust, but again, I would imagine that a large percentage of customers aren’t aware of where they can find them.

A huge potential privacy issue that I could see happening, but applies to all companies, is the compromise of their customer’s information due to Website hacking or social engineering. Amazon.com protects its information during transmission by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information. Although I’m sure their encryption is probably at least an AES-128 bit encryption, but mostly likely AES-256, there is always the possibility that the information could be decrypted and accessible for the wrong person to see. Some hackers try to use techniques like keystroke logging to try and decode a user’s password strictly by the keyboard keys they press (For example, if the keystroke logging software recorded the keys ‘elubg1bubm’, you might figure out the password is bubblegum1).

Not that it is asked, but figured I would share since it is a concept in the book, Amazon.com does participate in the Safe Harbor Program developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce. A safe harbor is “a private, self-regulating policy and enforcement mechanism that meets the objectives of government regulators and legislation, but does not involve government regulation or enforcement.” (course textbook)