By Steve Timpson and Marci Troutman

Research in both the corporate and government sectors have shown that multilayered notices build both trust and confidence in the consumer.

Most experts agree that effective transparency is the key to good privacy. In order to have effective transparency, privacy notices must be easy to understand, allow comparisons and afford action ability.
Privacy notices must also be designed for differing requirements from country to country and jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Layered notices. To facilitate the ability to understand a privacy notice, the language must be plainly written, short and easy to read. Complete notices, by nature, are more complex and harder to understand.

Both the plain notice and the complex notice are needed to allow good privacy and meet the needs of regional requirements. This is why there is a need for multilayered notices to be done on each internet site.

The recommendations in the European Union (EU) Article 29 Working Party done December 2004 are a solid and practical way to do privacy notices. These recommendations have gained wide acceptance within and outside the EU. This structure is as follows.

Layer 1. The short notice: the very minimum, for example, when space is very limited, providing only the identity of the data controller, contact details and the purposes of processing.

Layer 2. The condensed notice: covering the basics in less than a page, ideally using subheadings, and covering Scope; Personal information collected; Uses and sharing; Choices (including any access options); Important information; How to contact us.

Layer 3. The full notice.

Full mobile sites
Within each mobile site that is created by companies there needs to be a notices section that is a layer of the privacy policies and user policies that are live on the main wired Internet site.

This layered notices section should be optimized versions of the main privacy/user policies enabling the end user to understand that the site follows the same guidelines.

Users want to be ensured they are in a safe environment within the mobile Internet as well as within the PC/Mac online environment.

As we head deeper into the millennium, there will become a much larger demographic that is walking around conducting all of their business via their phones versus being landlocked to a PC/Mac or lugging around a heavy laptop that has to be powered up and down at each sitting.

While participating in a panel at the Federal Trade Commission's "Mapping the mobile marketplace"event, privacy notices were discussed along with options to better ensure rules are adhered to in mobile marketing and the mobile Internet, the same as the wired Internet marketing and Internet world.

In quite a few cases both of these marketing arms are the same with respect to the rules that apply. But in this new venue of mobile, there are a few rules that need to be changed to be more useful for the up-and-coming demographics that will become tied to mobile over the next few years.

Ensuring that the notices are layered gives the users a quick overview of the safety of the site, i.e., if you look at menusonyourmobile.com you will see at the end of each page the following layered notice: "Layered notice - we will not sell or rent your information... for more details visit menusonyourmobile.com on your PC/Mac."

This ensures users that if they indeed enter their email address to stay updated via their mobile device, this email address is safe within the hands of menusonyourmobile.com and will not be sold.

The minimum mobile privacy policy should be at least the layer 1 information and directions to go to the wired Internet site for full notices.

Each site that goes mobile must determine if it needs to include a full set of all privacy notices, both the plain and complex that might be necessary due to the nature of their business.

For instance, with a mobile banking site, there are quite a few more feel-good notices that should be included for a mobile user to feel comfortable within the mobile walls of that site.

American Express does a great job with the following link on their mobile version: "All use of this site subject to Mobile Site Terms. Within this link there are the following links for a more thorough review if you are in need of using this mobile banking system while on the go.

Terms of use/disclosures
Mobile Site Terms

Web Site Rules and Regulations

Privacy Statement

Home

Each link includes important terms, rules, regulations and privacy statements to ensure end users are safe and can go ahead and use their device to transact business on this mobile site.

An example of what doesn't work, in my opinion, would be simply the words: "Netflix Terms of Use apply,"without a link to at least a top-line review of a few important terms of use and a direction back to the main wired Internet site for further information.

With this as simply the only privacy notice available, users may balk at continuing on the mobile device and wait until they return home to review the mobile terms of use, in case they may be different.

The company could lose a large percentage of users that may have been picked up quickly on mobile, forgetting when they return home to go back to the site and ensure the safety of the mobile device.
Another example in the case of http://www.abc13now.com/ is if there is no privacy policy at all.

Understanding the use of this site is not designed for functionality but information only, we still believe this will be an important addition that needs to be considered in the near future for all mobile sites.

If you go to www.abc.com you will see that they indeed feel the importance of this piece on the main wired Internet site i.e., Terms of Use| Privacy Policy/Your California Privacy Rights, lending to the argument that if this is needed on the wired Internet version, why not on the mobile version?

SMS text message marketing campaigns
SMS is becoming the marketing tool of the near-term future in the mobile world.

Most users don't actually realize the method of opt out for the text campaigns. This should, at the very least, be added to the end of each SMS text campaign to ensure users know how to opt out of receiving text messages.

With this knowledge users will feel safer in receiving these marketing pieces in their coveted text window as they will understand that they can opt out at any time allowing the user to be more apt to allow these ads and also to shop from these ads without issue.

If these ads are forced by the marketer onto the user, without a means to opt out there will be an annoyance factor that could ruin the credibility of such marketing tools for a company using this marketing arm to reach their clients.

MLB.com does this well with a note on the Web site as well as the mobile site that says "Text Stop to 65246 to opt-out at any time.

Reference document
http://www.hunton.com/files/tbl_s47details%5Cfileupload265%5C1405%5Cten_steps_whitepaper.pdf

Marci Troutman is founder and Steve Timpson is chief operating officer of mobile site developer Siteminis Inc., Atlanta. Reach them at and .