The editorial comment about Libra, Facebook’s global digital currency (June 19), is right to highlight our concerns about the collection and sharing of data. With the frequent occurrence of data breaches and data misuse, ensuring data privacy and security have become major concerns.
ESOMAR, a global association for data and insight, urges businesses to remember that in order to continue to have the freedom to use consumer data, they need to collect and manage it responsibly. We work continuously to communicate the value of data and the need for robust protection. Transparency and consumer trust are proven to facilitate significantly greater data exchange(s) than opaque, “guerrilla” collection mechanisms.
If companies continue to betray the trust of consumers around the world — and in the case of Facebook, ignore the implications of their legacy reputation — we can only expect regulation to tighten, and data to become more protected. There is a price to be paid for non-ethical, non-transparent data collection, and it is much more than bad PR. Be data-smart!
Finn Raben,
Director-General, ESOMAR,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
