Protect Your Privacy! An Interview with PrivacyBuilder’s TJ McDonald

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Protect Your Privacy! An Interview with PrivacyBuilder’s TJ McDonald

By Brad Shorr | November 7, 2007

TJ McDonald, founder and president of PrivacyBuilders, is a client and someone who is passionate about protecting and respecting consumer data. To learn more about data privacy issues and how they affect us, read the following. It’s sobering.

Word Sell - How did data privacy come to be an important issue for you?

TJ McDonald - It started back in 1998 when a marketing executive in the insurance industry asked me if I knew how a piece of mail arrived at my postal mail box. I never really gave it much thought before then, but decide to find out. It didn’t take long for me to understand the process but what concerned me was how much information was out there about me. Incredible amounts of information, enough to make your feel exposed! And not much you could do about it!

Today, with the internet and wireless technology our lives, who we are, what we do, where we go, our beliefs and even to some extent what we think about are out on the auction block for sale to any company with the means and resources to buy it all. It is huge business, huge!

I value my data privacy, which to me means controlling my own data. Control, or should I say lack of control, is the key to why privacy became so important to me.

Word Sell - Many consumers don’t know much about how the “information sprawl” can hurt them. What are some examples of why we should be concerned?

TJ McDonald - I’ll answer that with a question: how does gossip hurt a person? Information sprawl to me is like gossiping for profit. You buy a product from a company, that company then shares or sells (gossips) your name, address, email and other transaction related information to a data broker who then sells it on the open market to whatever company wants it. Here’s the hurt, which I call the ‘ins’: information sprawl is inefficient (leads to junk mail), ineffective (1 out 200 pieces of mail mean something to me), invasive (violates my privacy) and insulting (they think that I would buy what?).

Secondary usages of your personal information is something that we need to keep an eye on, a very careful eye on. The Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, gives a glimpse into what secondary usages of personal information can be used for. It’s a topic for another day, but know that companies of all shapes and sizes want to rule the world of predictive analytics. To have the power to predict the next anything: terrorist, mass murderer, unethical doctor and pedophile. All by associative data, statistics and probability. It just happens that a person bought many of the same items, ate the same food, read the same books, searched the internet in similar ways to a know terrorist. Now your 13 year old daughter has a 9% terrorist probability rating.

Word Sell - How can consumers tell which companies respect privacy, and which don’t? Is that the idea behind privacybuilders.com?

TJ McDonald - It’s not easy to tell who are the companies that respect your privacy. The best 2 traditional ways were to read a company’s privacy policy and/or ask the company directly. Both ways are a hassle and, quite frankly, a privacy policy is not always what you expect (this is a topic, again, for another day).

What’s funny, and sad, about consumers and privacy policies is that a study showed that most consumers associated a company with a privacy policy as being a privacy-honoring company. How wrong these consumers are.

The idea behind PrivacyBuilders is to give privacy-valuing consumers what they need to take control of their personal information and stop the information sprawl.

Word Sell - What are 3 or 4 things we as consumers can do to take control of our personal information?

TJ McDonald - Get educated so that they can make informed decisions about usages of their personal information. Start by exploring my website, www.privacybuilders.com, and signing up for my newsletter.

Ask questions! Every company that they do business with has an affect on their personal privacy. “Do you share or sell your customer information to other entities?” If they say ‘yes’ ask, no tell them, to opt-you out of this practice. Over time, my PrivacyBuilders Select™ list of privacy-honoring companies will grow significantly, consumers can find companies that sell products and services, not their personal information.

Get the tools and services that ‘build’ your privacy. There are plenty of great companies that offer products and services to keep your information private and secure AND they respect your privacy. You can find some of these companies on the Privacy Tools page of my website.

Spread the word. Legislation to protect our personal information is slow because most of the public is unaware of what is happening and there is little pressure on the politicians to change. I am hoping to partner with the authentic and ethical grassroots organizations that have the ears of our politicians to let them know that privacy is very important. Stay tuned for this development.

Word Sell - Any parting thoughts?

TJ McDonald - “Thank you for my business does not mean thank you for my data!”
Brad Shorr, November 2006

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2 Responses to “Protect Your Privacy! An Interview with PrivacyBuilder’s TJ McDonald”

Joanna Young Says:
November 8th, 2007 at 9:05 am
That’s interesting Brad - I hadn’t really given much thought to this before. Sounds like I should…

Joanna
Protect Your Privacy! An Interview with PrivacyBuilder’s TJ McDonald | Ezdone Says:
January 30th, 2008 at 10:00 am
[…] TJ McDonald, founder and president of PrivacyBuilders, is a client and someone who is passionate about protecting and respecting consumer Continue reading […]