Protecting Customer Data and Keeping Their Confidence
October 13, 2010Recently, Mint.com had an issue where it sent out thousands of blank emails to thousands of customers. I’ve spoken with multiple friends who have had this issue, and the implications are often overlooked. Mint is a service that is not like many others. There are not very many web applications that deal with financial data, and that Mint aggregates all of that together means that it is all held in one location.
So, with that in mind, keeping customer data secure should be the number one priority. Mint should be focused on that above all else. The only companies that should have similar security are banks.
However, what often gets overlooked is test data. Understandably, the test data should be as similar to real data to make sure that you don’t have fringe cases that are overlooked, but any customer information should be removed. A friend and coworker, Jamie Forrest wrote something similar, and he brings up a great point that if customers do not feel that their data is safe, they will leave.
There are a lot of reasons to truly protect your users data, but the number one reason is that your business depends on it.
