Amazon.com apparently has begun collecting personal data on its customers. Nothing new. But seems there are a lot of people really worried. Here is a post I left on digg.com regarding this topic.

“Just don’t give out your information.

For those concerned about the database, remember that it’s a large corporation, with many, many inputs and differenet people typing in the information. Most of these databases get corupted data in them (ever typed your password in twice to change it? It’s because repeating and comparing the inputs is a good safety check against typos). The IRS has you self-report your taxes and then does spot-check audits.

A company can learn about zip codes, but they are not specific enough for effectuve merchandizing (any zip code can have houses ranging from $50k to $5M, the diverse incomes to support those house payments and fluctuating consumption as well depending on the owners’ perceived job security).

Can there be data to mine? Sure, but that assumes someone is really analyzing it. Supermarkets have tried “shoppers clubs” for years and they are no better off now than when they started. Many are abandoning these cards.

Or consider Automotive - the car companies track purchase patterns too - and what they always find is small cars (like the neons, PT cruisers, cobalts, civics, and corollas etc) always have a really high age group purchasing them (like averaging 54 years old). Then they run around trying to figure out how they missed their target consumers (was it the trim, the music package, were the advertisements in the wrong magazines or on the wrong tv shows, etc?) - the problem is their data. They have 54 year olds buying those cars for their sons’ & daughters’ first car. There are fewer 30 year olds buying cars for 16 year-ld kids than 54 year olds.

So your front-line defense is don’t share personal information (hard to resist those phishers too?). The second is to remember that data is corrupt. The third safety nets is inappropriate analysis.

Then worry less.

For the companies - stop over at www.privateproductivity.com/weblog for some help.”

Behind the Six Sigma quality movement is a reliance on actually analyzing data to get to the solution. And there are ways to better analyze data than are typically used, as well as improving the quality of the data existing and collected in the databases.

If you are a company looking to improve your data capture and analysis then please contact me. I am sure I can offer some quick and free advice or assist in really improving your systems.

Cheers!