Consumer Tip #2: Recognize What You Should and Should Not Provide to Businesses
1/19/2010
Businesses often request a lot of personal identifying information (PII) from their customers. Quite often, these are legitimate requests intended to facilitate a business transaction. But there are many organizations that don’t practice sound data minimization tactics and gather all sorts of unnecessary information from customers. For instance, businesses often request Social Security numbers (SSN) as a matter of routine. The question is: does the business have a legitimate need for the SSN? If so, what policies and procedures are employed to protect this customer data?
