'I Didn't Buy it for Myself': Privacy and Ecommerce Personalization

Abstract

Ecommerce personalization can help web sites build and retain relationships with customers, but it also raises a number of privacy concerns. This paper outlines the privacy risks associated with personalization and describes a number of approaches to personalization system design that can reduce these risks. This paper also provides an overview of the fair information practice principles and discusses how they may be applied to the design of personalization systems, and introduces privacy laws and self-regulatory guidelines relevant to personalization. Privacy risks can be reduced when personalization system designs allow for pseudonymous interactions, client-side data stores, and task-based personalization. In addition, interfaces that allow users to control the collection and use of their profile information can further ease privacy concerns.

Citation

Lorrie Faith Cranor. 'I Didn't Buy it for Myself': Privacy and Ecommerce Personalization. In Proceedings of the 2003 ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, October 30, 2003, Washington, DC.

Extended version:

Lorrie Faith Cranor. 'I Didn't Buy it for Myself': Privacy and Ecommerce Personalization. In Clare-Marie Karat, Jan O. Blom, and John, Karat, eds. Designing Personalized User Experiences in eCommerce. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.

Full Text

  • PDF (author's version of WPES paper)
  • PDF (author's version of book chapter)
  • Final version to appear in ACM Digital Library, November 2003

Lorrie Faith Cranor