Opt in or opt out? It sounds like a distinction only a lawyer could love. But it has become a crucial issue in debates over protecting the privacy of personal information.
Privacy advocates say Americans should have an "opt-in" option whenever Web sites, banks and other companies share personal information about their customers. In other words, businesses should be prohibited from sharing or selling data about a customer unless that particular customer gives consent.
So far, business has prevailed with its insistence on "opt-out" provisions that put the onus on customers. They must take the time and trouble to ask that their information be kept confidential.
"It says, "We can take your information unless you tell us not to.' That's not privacy protection," said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "Privacy has to do with giving consumers control of their information, not something you have to read fine print to get."
The business-backed opt-out approach for banking was incorporated by Congress last year in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley financial modernization act. If customers do not notify their bank otherwise by phone or in writing, they give it their implied consent to lease or sell personal information to a telemarketer, marketing partner, vendor or other outside company.
"Opt out" also is the approach being promoted by business-friendly lawmakers for other privacy bills before Congress. And it's being adopted in privacy policies being embraced voluntarily by many Web sites.
Even bankers acknowledge that relatively few consumers will bother to pursue an opt-out option.
"If Congress really wanted to control (the selling of information), it would have done an opt in," said Chris Hunter, general counsel of Republic Bank in St. Petersburg. "That would kill it off. Nobody is ever going to opt in. It would never happen."
Times staff writer John Balz contributed to this report.
