Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Making these distinctions even more challenging is the fact that the definition of what constitutes privacy is itself changing. At one time, for example, the question of whether a consumer is in a romantic relationship would have been the epitome of a private matter. For many Facebook fans who are teenagers or in their early 20s today, that is a very public declaration and deliberately so.

The report contrasted that relationship question with three other pieces of information Facebook has routinely sought: Instant Messenger name, phone number and physical home address.

“The first three elements (IM, phone, address) represent explicit vectors for communication, as in information that can be used to gain access to the person,” the report said. “The fourth element (relationship) is a Facebook convention that signals a degree of willingness for communication. Looking for is shorthand for ‘What type of a relationship are you looking for?’ and responses can range from simple friendship to a serious relationship. Whereas the first three elements are vectors for contact information, ‘Looking for’ can be understood as a call-to-action for contact.”

Perceived as a call to action, that data is something the consumer wants shared as widely as possible. Hence, what some might consider the ultimate in private data is shared enthusiastically while mundane datapoints such as a phone number are considered much more sensitive. And yet in what is believed to be a private circle, privacy is much more flexible.

The report also pointed out that, in the hands of an experienced cyberthief, all pieces of information can be pieced together to gather much more information. “The combination of hometown and birthdate information could be effectively used to predict an individual’s social security number with reasonable accuracy,” it said.

Privacy has always been this amorphous quality, which means different things to different people. And it means different things for those exact same people over time, as their income, age, marital status and professional settings change. That’s why it’s difficult to create a meaningful retail privacy policy.

When retailers who are pushing MCX talk about the reasons for such a retail payment alliance, one of their key points is privacy. But not the privacy of shopper data. It’s about the privacy of CRM data going from one chain to another. It’s ironic perfection that what they want to keep private are as many intimate details about their customers’ shopping habits as possible. It’s critical for them to have it, but an atrocity for a competing chain to have it. It’s really not about privacy as much as having a competitive advantage.

Therein lies the real retail privacy conundrum. Most chains want to gather as much information as possible about their shoppers—surreptitiously, if possible—and to then ask those shoppers to volunteer much more data.

“Like a modern Sisyphus, some consumers strive to reach their chosen ‘privacy spot,’ their desired balance between revealing and protecting, only to be taken aback by the next privacy challenge,” the report said.

That also nicely describes the retail privacy challenge. Shopper privacy promises have to be presented as comforting, a request that will never be used to help the chain take advantage of that information to persuade the shopper to buy more. When privacy policies are really legal phrasings of privacy violation policies, it’s hard to make them sound convincing.

Thanks to CMU, there’s good news. Those privacy declarations need not be especially convincing. They simply need to exist. Finally, a task that legal and marketing can easily master.