Internet Banking
News
November 9, 1999 - Special Edition
Today, the four federal banking agencies released a 65 page report on the
results of a survey of Internet privacy policies of banking and thrift institutions. The
survey report, titled Interagency Financial Institution Web Site Privacy Survey Report,
examined 314 World Wide Web sites selected randomly, plus those of the 50 largest banks
and thrifts with Web sites.
Overall, 48 percent of the 364 Web sites surveyed posted a privacy disclosure. Only 16%
had Internal opt out procedures, and 18% had External opt out procedures. The survey
further showed that transactional web sites were more likely to have a privacy statement
than an informational web site.
The survey shows that the examiners will be looking closely at the content of your privacy
statement. The survey questions were interesting. A couple of questions had to do with the
location of the link on the home page, and if the site visitor had to scroll down to
locate the link.
The FDIC press release can be found at http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/1999/pr9966.html
and the 65 page report is at http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/1999/privacy.pdf. |
