I’m sure many of you have received a privacy policy update email from a merchant/dealbroker recently, probably due to a merger, acquisition, or hangs in business direction.
It almost certainly told you to check out all the exciting ways that they’re making the service more relevant to you via a link to… the privacy policy.
Catch did this to me this morning, and I don’t really want to pick apart the minutiae of legalese that their new owners (Wesfarmers) have foisted on them as a way to collect more customer data.
The value of customer data is incredibly understated, but the discussion is almost wholly centred around US and EU regulations, and the topic draws more than it’s fair share of both apologists and outrage olympians, so it's hard to get a balanced view.
As Australia’s foremost amateur consumer advocacy group standing committee [1], I’d like to propose a ‘Privacy Corner’ on OzB.
The objectives would be fairly straightforward:
- Promote understanding of the impact to consumers of various changes and language.
The structure would include:
Posts related to a specific company that actually has business in Australia, or is at least relevant to Australian public
Discussions around domestic and international regulatory changes
Post updates to privacy polices
The structure of posts would include:
Verified updates would be tagged with the company’s name
Company-specific posts would need to include a link to the PP, and a link to the forum post could be referenced in each deal.
A link to the change in Privacy Policy using Diffchecker
That last point addresses my initial rant about the link 'outlining the changes' actually just being a link to the current one. I'll demonstrate n example post in the first reply below.
[1] Let's face it: Choice is the best place for this, but my login expired months ago. The comments section at OzB usually comes up with some great advice and the trolls tend to get weeded out fairly quickly.
Example post:
Updated Catch Privacy Policy
Received an email about Catch's updated privacy policy today.
Current PP: https://www.catch.com.au/privacy
Previous PP (25/11/22): https://web.archive.org/web/20220407132000/https://www.catch…
Diffchecker link: https://www.diffchecker.com/zkiNYFgy