Ten big issues – 6: Rather than harvesting consent or using overly complex privacy policies to avoid fines, organisations need to be adopting a company-wide culture of digital ethics if they want to build digital trust in their brands.
On the privacy front, regulations require unambiguous consent that is not only explicit but also meaningful. This is at odds with the approach adopted by many marketeers to maximise revenue by using catch-all “consent harvesting” with pre-ticked boxes or the provision of no alternative path to a service. It is also at odds with the approach adopted by many CISOs to minimise the risk of fines with “privacy policy overload” using lengthy detailed documentation that customers won’t read, meaning that they don’t know what they’re consenting to.
Instead of using either “consent harvesting” or “privacy policy overload” to overcome the impact of GDPR, brands need to see it as an opportunity to adopt a company-wide culture of digital ethics to promote trust and confidence among consumers.
Improving the customer experience is a top priority for organizations, with business leaders focusing on creating a seamless and personalized experience. Privacy need not be a barrier to this, nor need it inhibit innovation. The UK Department for Media, Culture and Sport guidance states that, “Ethics and innovation are not mutually exclusive. Thinking carefully about how we use our data can help us be better at innovating when we use it.”
Indeed, research shows that the main issues that consumers now expected companies to act on are security and privacy, surpassing things like diversity and sustainability that used to top this list.
Organizations that adopt digital ethics as a core cultural value are not only able to enhance customer trust and confidence, but are also less likely to experience a data breach as well as better able to respond in the event of one (Brands, Trust & Digital Ethics).