Retailers are joining new alliance to spark data privacy change
The 4 July marked the launch of the Ethical Commerce Alliance (ECA), a new organisation formed to open industry debate around privacy and address ethical challenges online to give consumers back control over their digital rights.
The new Alliance is an independent, open space for education and knowledge sharing about privacy and data protection. As latest research shows, globally 75% of consumers are worried about how companies use their data, the ECA offers guidance for retailers to avoid privacy violations, while safeguarding personal data beyond GDPR compliance.
The core principles of the Alliance focus on accountability, trust and transparency to offer guidance to participating businesses to provide top tier customer experiences, without compromising on customers’ data privacy.
The ECA brings together industry experts from brands and retailers, to academia and policy makers. The Alliance works to rebuild trust in online shopping through adopting privacy-first measures and transparency as part of retailers’ digital transformation programmes.
The aim is to connect retail businesses and experts to share knowledge, best practices and offer viable alternatives that go beyond the baseline GDPR compliance. To build a safer and more trustworthy digital society, embracing all the competitive advantages that come with data minimisation and regaining consumer trust.
Nina Müller, Ethical Commerce Alliance director said: “The time is now for the retail and ecommerce sector to put their best foot forward and make significant strides in creating digital practices that respect consumers’ private data. It’s vital that this is not viewed solely as a policy issue and the industry acknowledges it has a responsibility to enact practices that go beyond what is currently asked for from GDPR.
“By coming together as an industry to learn and share best practices, we will be able to overcome the challenges we face and create a human-centric, privacy focused digital world built on trust and transparency.”
The ECA upon its launch is able to announce that DataEthics.eu, Privacy Cloud, Konsolidate (BE) join Empathy.co as the first partners of the Alliance.
Sergio Maldonado, CEO of PrivacyCloud added: “The Ethical Commerce Alliance is finally bringing to life a well-needed alignment between the expectations of consumers and the incentives of retailers when it comes to privacy, individual agency, and ethical guidelines in a more general sense. We are definitely thankful for this common umbrella!”
The ECA hosts a series of talks, meetups and panel discussions as part of its Ethical Commerce Series taking place across Europe to open industry debate and discussion around privacy and to question the status quo. The next event, The perils of prediction: Powerful Conversion or Deceptive Analytics?, takes place on July 5th 2022 at the Empathy HQ in Gijón, Spain. The panel will be hosted by ECA director Nina Müller with guests Carissa Véliz, Associate Professor for Philosophy at the University of Oxford and author of the highly-acclaimed “Privacy is Power”; Rafael Jimenez, founder of the privacy-first analytics company “SealMetrics” and CEO and founder of Empathy.co, Ángel Maldonado.
