Privacy Statements as a Means of Uncertainty Reduction in WWW Interactions - End User Computing Challenges and Technologies: Emerging Tools and Applications - page 199

data sharing

compared to the total sample. Similarly, more
seal companies (94.7%) provide information on
PII sharing with third parties than companies in
the total sample (88%). Notably, no seal company
admits to sharing PII with third parties without
the user's permission.
Another code in the analysis addressed the
selling of customer data. Half of the companies
say that they do not sell or rent customer data to
third parties, and only one company admits to sell-
ing customer data. Interestingly, the percentage
of companies promising not to sell PII (50%) is
higher than those not sharing PII with third parties
(42%). As for the seal companies, the percentage
of those not selling and those not sharing PII is
the same (57.89%).
Only nine companies say explicitly that they
do not share e-mail addresses with third parties,
while six admit to doing so, and 14 do so only
with the user's permission. Of the 19 seal com-
panies, two share e-mail addresses, and 10 offer
opt-in or opt-out facilities, but not a single one
claims that it does not share e-mail addresses.
As mentioned earlier, 52% of the companies use
sweepstakes as a means of collecting customer
data, but only one of them promises not to share
these data, while six state explicitly that they share
these data, one shares only aggregate data and
lets users opt out of sharing PII, and two share
only aggregate data. The remaining companies do
not provide any information as to what happens
with data that users divulge when participating
in a sweepstake.

Most companies (84%) point out that they share
data with agents who either assist in completing
orders (e.g., delivery companies) or perform other
business services (e.g., customer communications
or data analysis). While 28% of those companies
who address data sharing with business agents (n
= 42) do not specify whether these agents have to
sign a privacy agreement with the company, 50%
state that they have to, 4% state that only some
agents are required to sign such agreements, and
2% say that agents are not required to sign any
agreement.
Table 5 shows the companies' data sharing
practices of aggregate and personally identifiable
information with third parties and with what they
call affiliates, , which they fail to define. The exact
nature of these affiliations is not explained in the
privacy policies. The percentage of companies
providing no information is alarming, particularly
regarding the sharing of information with affiliates
(66%). As for the sharing of aggregate data, the
results obtained for the seal companies (36.8%)
closely mirror those obtained for the total sample
(34%). The high percentage of companies shar-
ing PII with affiliates (42%) is also noteworthy,
considering that these may maintain completely
different privacy policies. The fact that relatively
more seal companies provide specific information
on PII sharing obviously results in a relatively
higher number of companies sharing (52.6%)
and not sharing (15.8%) data with affiliates,

Table 5. Data-sharing practices

Note: Seal companies in brackets (n = 19)