Privacy policies: Impacting conversion and online sales?

The last few years have yielded discussions of the role of text in interface, or text as interface. Stepping away from conventional interface design for a moment, we applied the principle of text as interface to an evaluation of the privacy policies on Amazon.com and Yahoo.com.

What did we find?
We learned that Amazon's privacy policy is highly specific about the type of information it harvests about its users, whereas Yahoo glosses over much of the same information. The end result is the appearance of a lack of transparency on the part of Yahoo, compared to Amazon's extremely specific and open policy statement.

Why does this matter?
Our usability studies have shown that privacy policies and clarity of how well they're stated directly impacts a user's likelihood to complete an interaction. Amazon and Yahoo both admit to collecting the following information:

• Email address
• Login, name and password
• Cookie information
• Address
• Occupation
• Social Security number
• Personal descriptions/interests
• Software and hardware attributes
• IP address

What else is collected?
Yahoo remains vague, whereas Amazon specifies that the following information is collected and why:

• Computer and connection information such as browser type, version, and time zone setting
• Browser plug-in types and versions, operating system, and platform
• The full Uniform Resource Locator (URL) clickstream to, through, and from our Web site, including date and time
• Content of reviews and e-mails to us
• The phone number you used to call our 800 number

Who else gets my information?
While both companies state that your information is shared with third parties and trusted partners, only Amazon lists names, which include:

• Target
• CD Now
• Verizon Wireless
• Sprint
• AT&T

Google Dashboard - a move in the right direction

Google's announcement today of Google Dashboard is a start in creating greater transparency. It allows you to view and manage information that Google is currently capturing. For example, you can view privacy policies and manage setting for all your Google accounts such as Blogger, GMail and Chat, view which of your data is private and which is visible to others, and remove items from your Web history.

We at Interface Guru encourage you to make use of tools and services that openly declare their usage of your personal data. Facebook's lack of transparency has been a recent hot topic - and rightfully so. Stand up for your digital rights!