Data security, can everyone be trusted ? Not so sure, because legislation, depending on where the collected data is hosted (data centers), varies according to the Marketing Automation solution you choose. A factor of utmost importance.
Bob knows everything about me ! My food preferences, my clothing size, my interests, my vacation plans, the brand of my deodorant, my opinions, my little rants and my great enthusiasms, my minor ailments, … He knows everything about my private life : the important dates in my life (birthdays, celebrations, the birth dates of those close to me…), when I go out and with whom, the last show I went to see… The only problem is that Bob is not my boyfriend !
Orwell is among us, if you don’t pay attention !
In short, Bob is Big Brother. Okay, we’re not living in a dictatorship and Newspeak is not the order of the day. But if we return to the topic that interests us, namely Marketing Automation, you have to be aware that the 5 “major players” in the sector (namely Oracle, Salesforce, IBM, Adobe, Marketo, Hubspot) are all American. That’s where the problem lies (or where Bob pokes his nose in, depending on your point of view !). Because by using these Marketing Automation solutions, all the data collected is de facto directly transferred to and hosted in the USA (unlike the data collected via Webmecanik’s Marketing Automation solution, which is hosted in France).
Nothing very worrying at first glance, except that European and American legislation relating to data protection and privacy (data privacy) differs significantly.
Data: cultural differences between the USA and Europe
It must be said that the cultural outlook between the two economic spheres (Europe and the United States) is radically different. While Europeans classify online personal data as a “human right”, Americans place it under “consumer protection” (see the Le Nouvel Économiste article “Data and privacy : Hands off my cloud” from October 2015).
This difference in outlook, which may not seem staggering from a semantic point of view, is nonetheless fundamental. One need only remember, in this regard, the repercussions of the Snowden affair.
It is a matter of debate !
Admittedly, one can argue that there is a shield called the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield (which replaced the now-defunct “Safe Harbor”), signed in February 2016 by the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce, whose purpose is to protect the fundamental rights of European citizens when their data is transferred to data centers in the United States. A March 2016 article in Les Échos, entitled “Privacy and the Internet : the USA-Europe gap is not that huge”, offered a fairly reassuring opinion on the subject, even if the author (Editor’s note : Charles Cuvelliez, Lecturer at the École Polytechnique de Bruxelles) did not fail to mention : “We’ll see in practice.” Even if the USA Freedom Act, passed in June 2015 by the U.S. Senate, limits certain surveillance powers of the NSA (National Security Agency) conferred by the Patriot Act (established following the September 11, 2001 attacks), by prohibiting the large-scale collection of American citizens’ personal data. But what about people living abroad ?
Be that as it may, these debates show that data relating to the private lives of individuals and consumers, when hosted in Europe, such as in France, is “better protected”. That U.S. policy will never be under the scrutiny and influence of European citizens, which leaves the door open to intrusive excesses. However, even if some companies think this is not such a big deal, what do their clients really think ? What do their consumers think about this highly sensitive subject ?
Finally, to all the companies and brands that nevertheless wish to ignore this, please pass on my regards to Bob !
