Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I create software for people that create software and I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

Ecommerce liability

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 20 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

19 Jun 2003

Is your Web site secure against common hacker attacks? You’d better be sure. Guess just settled a case with the US Government where they were accused of not doing enough to protect consumer data. A security breach leaves you open to lawsuits from your customers, bad press, and now fines from the government.

Guess was fined for leaving customer data vulnerable even though the companies published policies stated that they took steps to protect customer data. This might have something of a chilling effect on public-facing privacy policies. One of my clients was advised by their lawyer not to post a privacy policy. The lawyer’s reasoning was that if you don’t make it public you can’t be sued for not abiding by it.

Trackback from Compendium
June 20, 2003 6:47 AM

Ditching privacy policies?

Excerpt: Adam Kalsey says at least some companies are trying to eliminate liabilities for violating their Web site's privacy policies (for example, if a hacker gets into a customer database) by eliminating their privacy policies.

Philip Tellis
October 31, 2003 12:39 AM

Would be nice if you used the term "cracker" instead of "hacker"

This discussion has been closed.

Recently Written

Too Big To Fail (Apr 9): When a company piles resources on a new product idea, it doesn't have room to fail. That keeps it from succeeding.
Go small (Apr 4): The strengths of a large organization are the opposite of what makes innovation work. Starting something new requires that you start with a small team.
Start with a Belief (Apr 1): You can't use data to build products unless you start with a hypothesis.
Mastery doesn’t come from perfect planning (Dec 21): In a ceramics class, one group focused on a single perfect dish, while another made many with no quality focus. The result? A lesson in the value of practice over perfection.
The Dark Side of Input Metrics (Nov 27): Using input metrics in the wrong way can cause unexpected behaviors, stifled creativity, and micromanagement.
Reframe How You Think About Users of your Internal Platform (Nov 13): Changing from "Customers" to "Partners" will give you a better perspective on internal product development.
Measuring Feature success (Oct 17): You're building features to solve problems. If you don't know what success looks like, how did you decide on that feature at all?
How I use OKRs (Oct 13): A description of how I use OKRs to guide a team, written so I can send to future teams.