IAR: Companies Alter Privacy Policies

Many companies are changing their privacy policies to reflect new realities. Those realities include more integrated businesses that require more information sharing between business units, as well as the increased penetration of the Internet and increasing use of the Internet for transactions. Those developments make private information more valuable to companies, both for their own use and for the sale of it to third parties.

Disney provides a good example of a company changing its privacy policies for both reasons. They will now allow itineraries planned online to be shared with their telesales staff so that customers don't have to repeat everything when they call to purchase a trip. And they also will now allow for the mailing of third party offers to those Internet users.