Copyright 1998 Gannett Company, Inc. USA TODAY

April 20, 1998, Monday, FIRST EDITION

YOUR PRIVACY

Soon you might have a say in whether your favorite clothing store sells information about your buying habits to catalogs and other retailers.

Increasingly, the nation's biggest marketers are paying attention to their customers' desire for more privacy. Just last week, the National Retail Federation, which represents retailers from Sears to Saks Fifth Avenue, unveiled its first privacy guidelines.

Consumer giants and major retailers are responding to a powerful convergence of events in the USA and Europe. "The privacy issue has never been this hot," says Evan Hendricks, editor of Privacy Times newsletter. What's going on:

-- Congressional threats. More than a dozen bills related to privacy are being considered by Congress, including several on medical records.

-- White House scandal. Consumer concern about privacy has intensified in the month since independent counsel Kenneth Starr subpoenaed names of books that former White House intern Monica Lewinsky purchased from two Washington-area book shops. The retailers challenged the subpoenas, which are part of Starr's perjury investigation of President Clinton.

-- Legal moves. Consumers increasingly are suing. A Massachusetts man is suing CVS, Glaxo-Wellcome and marketing firm Elensys Care Services, charging that the three firms violated his privacy by sharing his prescription drug history.

-- Federal scrutiny. A Federal Trade Commission report to Congress on Internet privacy is due later this summer.

-- International actions. After October, it will be illegal for European Union businesses to export personal data for commercial purposes to countries -- like the USA -- that lack comparable privacy laws. The ban could bar subsidiaries of international companies from sharing marketing data.

Despite the pressure, privacy advocates say marketers aren't doing enough to protect customer information. The retail federation's guidelines, for instance, are voluntary. "If there are no consequences for not complying, no one will pay attention to them," says Frank Torres of Consumers Union.

The guidelines, which took two years to write, urge retailers to disclose how they use information on customers' buying habits and to allow customers to "opt out" of having that information sold to or shared with other companies. Each retailer would develop its own procedure for informing customers. "The provisions underscore the industry's commitment" to privacy, says the federation's Mallory Duncan.

Other new privacy policies:

-- Four national banking groups recently put in place guidelines on the use of customers' personal information.

-- Beginning July 1999, members of the Direct Marketing Association must inform customers how information on them is collected and used.

-- Last year, Sears put its consumer privacy guidelines in writing for the first time "when it became clear a company our size should have a cohesive, coherent policy," spokeswoman Jan Drummond says.