You might think that as a marketing professional, I would be fascinated by loyalty programs and their power to grow revenue by creating repeat sales and building customer relationships. (I am!) So logically you might expect me to sign up for every loyalty program possible where I regularly spend $, to both experience it as a marketer, as well as reap the benefits of being a member. (Free makeup samples at Sephora! Special discounts at Rite Aid! Birthday bonuses from Anthropogie!) The truth? I avoid Loyalty Programs like a middle seat on a 6-hour flight.
I avoid all manner of giving away personal info to companies, even ones where I regularly spend my cash. My privacy is worth more to me than free mascara samples and 20% off coupons. I know how valuable my personal details are to the marketing team at a company, but its security is far more valuable to me than any incentive a company has ever dangled in front of me. I’m not giving it away just for a discount on a new spring skirt or some cute espadrilles. I’d rather spend the extra $ and keep my personal info secure. Why? For one, it is clear by the breaches that happen almost daily now, that companies are struggling to protect customers’ data. Just look at some of the more recent breaches from top-name companies: Equifax – exposed data of 143 million customers; Uber – over 56 million customers affected by a data breach, and there is still aftermath from the Yahoo data breach that happened years ago with it being revealed last year that the number of people affected jumped from 1 billion to 3 billion. Secondly, working in the security industry, I just know too much know about data security to feel confident my data will be secure. The risk of accidental or intentional exposure of my data is far too high in today’s world.
There is not always a lot of control users have when it comes to data breaches, but one small line of defense I can take is to control how much of my information I share with the companies and services I am using.
As a customer, I would never sell my personal info and my purchase history for some free samples or a birthday discount because I don’t think we fully understand the implication of privacy breaches in our data driven economy yet, other than of course the direct impact of our credit card being stolen or our social security number being compromised. I don’t think I’ll ever participate in loyalty programs unless laws are enacted to protect our privacy, but beyond that, I would need to know how companies protect my privacy.
As a user, before giving away my personal information to a company, I want to know how that company will keep my data protected and give me secure access to my data. Currently, I believe there is too much focus from companies on figuring out how to collect and analyze customer data to apply toward marketing and audience targeting strategies and not enough focus on keeping that customer data they interact with safe. At BOHH Labs, we believe that data is invaluable and we are focused on re-evaluating how customers can have access to their data, yet keep it safe when sharing it with companies and services.
We believe that the parties at the two ends of a data message – the sender and requester – should be the only ones to have access to that data message. As such, our security approach focuses on ensuring a secure transport of data between all users, applications, and the end database services. We use a powerful combination of keyless encryption that keeps data protected both in transit and at rest and Artificial Intelligence technology, Natural Language Processing, and In-Memory Distributed Blockchain Ledger to ensure that your data stays protected, no matter where it is stored or accessed from. And until I know that the companies I do business with protect my data with the same care, I guess I’ll be paying more for my moisturizer and melatonin. But I wont be losing sleep over who has access to my private info.
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