Brands, media owners, loyalty operators face difficult fast decisions on all automated decision

[Jahangir655]

“Every company is a software company,” as Watts S. Humphrey once famously observed, but this is probably not what he had in mind. As brands bid to wring every ounce of profit from every dollar earned through the efficiency of automated decision-making that understands customers better than they understand themselves, they now face a new and potentially costly risk – penalties in the millions of dollars, and a regulatory regime that makes it easier for the market policemen to write you a ticket.

What’s more, it’s not fully clear how broad the definition of what constitutes automated decision-making will be – which puts almost everyone on notice. Privacy specialists Mi3 spoke with stressed there’s much more work to be done than simply writing a new privacy policy. For starters, you have to adhere to it. That might mean costly and complicated business and system process changes that move at the speed of compliance – but in a market powered by the accelerant of generative AI.

What you need to know:
It’s time to take your privacy policy seriously. If you are using ecuador mobile phone numbers database customer data to automate decisions, your customers need to be able to understand that from your privacy policy. If it’s not simply disclosed and clearly articulated, expect fines.

Those fines will come thicker and faster thanks to two new penalty tiers including “administrative” breaches with fines up to $330,000 that the regulators can levy without going to court.

There’s also a mid-tier level of fines that could cost you over $3m for breaches that don’t rise to the worst case outcomes.
Then there’s the small matter of how customers react to all the new transparency, especially as they have new opportunities to pursue companies through a statutory tort, although there is no direct right to action – something privacy experts say previous governments have been loathe to introduce.

Privacy consultants say brands they work with are already in breach of the old rules, let alone the new ones.
And don’t fall into the trap of believing it’s simply a case of updating the privacy policy, you also need to make sure that business processes reflect the policy, and that in turn could lead to system changes and additional costs.