As of July 1, 1999 the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) requires its members – which include catalogs, banks, book and music clubs and internet merchants – to follow a set of consumer privacy protection practices. The DMA’s Privacy Promise to American Consumers is the latest effort to bolster confidence in direct shopping and to avert the threat of European-style privacy legislation being enacted in the USA.
The Promise requires DMA members to give notice when they share customers’ personal information with other marketers and to permit customers to opt out if they don’t want their information shared. Members must also honor individuals’ requests not to receive solicitations. Finally, DMA members must use the DMA’s Mail Preference Service and Telephone Preference Service to clean their prospect lists by removing people who don’t want unsolicited commercial contacts.
The DMA boasts that more than 99% of its members endorse the principles of the Privacy Promise. It quotes US Secretary of Commerce William Daley as saying: Private sector leadership of this sort is critical to building consumer confidence in the electronic marketplace. What the advocates of self-regulation tend to overlook, however, is that the industry has little interest in policing itself, let alone in punishing breaches of its published codes of practice. Without a clear policy on enforcement, the DMA’s initiative looks like the latest in a long line of publicity stunts on consumer privacy. á
