• by November 29, 2007

I work in the data-based customer insight business. We have three cardinal rules around how data can be used:

1) It must be used in a way that is actiuvely good for the customer.

2) It must not be used in a way that the customer would object to or is bad for the customer.

3) It must not make a customer who discovers we are doing something think "Whoa, just a moment here!"

Where there is a conflict between business objectives and customer objectives, the customer objectives win....

There does need to be regulation to help protect people from the excesses that we will avoid, but care must be taken in their formulation. The judge in [the Amazon case discussed in this article] is to be commended for seeing the larger picture and not allowing the pursuit of law breakers to endanger the right of the innocent.