The Information Commissioner's Office has launched an online consultation on a new draft code of practice for protecting individuals' privacy online.
The guidance explains how the law applies and calls on organisations to give people the right degree of choice and control over their personal information.
It includes details on when and when not to collect information online, and a call to give people clear privacy choices and make it easier for them to erase their personal information at the end of a browsing session.
It also provides practical advice about areas such as cloud computing, where in reality organisations may not know the location of information they are responsible for. In addition, it calls on organisations to use the technology available to them to give people better rights — for example, real-time access to personal information where this is possible.
Speaking at the Personal Information Online conference in Manchester, information commissioner Christopher Graham said: "The internet plays a huge role in our everyday lives as we do more of our business online than ever before. Customers can always vote with their feet and punish organisations that they feel have let them down, which serves as a very real reminder that getting privacy online wrong is a risky game to play.
"People should have control over what happens to their personal information online — whether it's correcting inaccuracies, deleting profiles or choosing the privacy settings that suit them."
The consultation will run until 5 March, 2010.
Talkback
Collecting other peoples personal information at all, even for online transactions, I've never understood why online retailers use customer account systems to retain peoples details.
When i purchase something from shops they don't need to retain my details, so why do online retailers? apart from a deliver address that can be removed once the delivery has being signed for.
I mean the banks have there own way to check/authorize online purchases on a per transaction basis, and for business accounting reasons receipts exist for that, not to mention the banks retain there own records.
Online retailers do not need to retain peoples personal details, and quite frankly they should not be allowed to either.