How many times have you surfed to a new site, only to be asked for your name, birthday and gender? Did you enter information that was requested? And if you did enter it, was it real information or something you made up?I don't know about you, but I find sites which needlessly ask for personal information to be annoying. In fact, I will leave a site moment a site requires me to enter anything which is not necessary to complete transaction.
Yes, I do understand that when I apply for a credit card I need to enter my social security number, birthday and mother's maiden name. In these instances, purpose of information is readily apparent - it is needed in order to obtain my credit record. This is normal and expected and thus I don't even think about entering data.
On other hand, why does that free mail account require me to enter my birthday and gender? Worse yet, they want to know how much money I make! Why on earth would I want them this information? They obviously don't need this data to create a free mailbox - so there must be some other purpose which is not obvious.
Of course, they want this data so they can build a profile about me, which in turn can be used to target advertising to me and other's like me. My personal information is not likely to be used specifically - rather, it is grouped together and sold as a unit. For example, an advertiser might want to display a banner to thirty year old males who make $30,000 a year or more. By having this information, free email account company can satisfy that need for their customers - advertisers.
Yeah, I know they promise in their privacy policy that information will not be abused - but Amazon recently told us all how important privacy policies are to corporate America. This company simply modified policy to allow information to be sold to third parties! They sent out an email informing all of their customers that information which used to be private is private no longer.
So a privacy policy does not appear to be a binding document - at least, it's not if it can be changed at will. What this means is a privacy policy is essentially worthless, even if you completely trust company. Why worthless? Well, if that company that you trust with all of your personal data is sold, it is no longer run by people that have earned your trust. New owners could easily modify policy at any time.
Ah, I hear you saying, who cares about privacy anyway? Well, you should. Let me give you an example. Let's say you've been purchasing liquor over internet. Now your wife divorces you and subpoenas that internet company for records of your purchases. She could, in theory, use that information against you in a divorce case. The liquor receipts do not prove you were an alcoholic, but they could certainly be used to sway a jury that it is possible.