This "Time: It Really Is Money" illustration is from a 9/11/00 article by the same name in InformationWeek.com. In it, it says on page 2: "As income and wages increase, the cost of time will continue to grow and so will the sense that time is scarce and that life proceeds at a faster pace than in the past." It goes on to say: "Along the way, new opportunities will emerge for businesses to make a profit by charging a fee and saving customers time." Well, here we are almost six years later, and it certainly is true.
This "Time Is Money" article says: "Businesses and individuals are going to have to think about relating the monetary value of time and ultimately the best ways to spend it wisely." For each individual the value of their time can be calculated just like a businessman would do it, as shown in "PUT A PRICE ON YOUR TIME ". Therefore, it is my belief that when a website intentionally deceives, or unintentionally misleads the online end-user, that website is stealing money! Now, I know that the FTC or any court of law is not going to award damages in most of these situations, but something still needs to be done. Otherwise, the theme of this 11/24/05 imediaconnection.com article entitled "Consumers Still Don't Trust the Internet" will continue to be very true for many reasons!
Let's take a closer look at "what's going on" online.
That last article suggests that Privacy Policies should be "..consistently less confusing and long." (AGREED!). It also suggests that the "Verisign Seal" could be important in trusting banking sites. However, this 5/19/06 article: "Calif. Court Certifies Class Action Vs. VeriSign " communicates the possibility of "false and misleading advertising" from the "world's largest provider of SSL certificates." These "Trust Certificates" are not trusted in some cases for good reason, as that imediaconneciton.com article points out: "only 24 percent of respondents said that 'seals of approval from other groups' were an important reason to visit (or trust) a website, and this seems a pity." It is a pity, since there are probably good reasons for that lack of trust in "Trust Certificates"! While that article says: "More familiarity = more trust", the "test of time" can prove otherwise depending on the individual website!
Ben Edelman (Harvard Law School) is invited to do a presentation on: "Adverse Selection in Online "Trust" Authorities" at the "The Fifth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS 2006). Cambridge, United Kingdom on June 28, 2006. Ben says in his 5/11/06 working draft of his presentation that "The sites that seek and obtain trust certifications are actually significantly less trustworthy than those that forego certification." Ben also contributed to the 5/12/06 McAfee SiteAdvisor study on "The Safety of Internet Search Engines" in which some of the key findings were "All the major search engines returned risky sites in their search results for popular keywords." and "Sponsored results contained two to four times as many dangerous sites as organic results."
This is just some of "what's going on" online! It appears that the "Holy Grail of Trust" is becoming harder to achieve for legitimate sites that have a high degree of "Integrity" (Mirriam-Webster's OnLine most looked up word for 2005). Why? Because "one, or many, rotten apples spoil the barrel." The online end-user even has to be careful not to mistype the web address or keywords they use to search due to the reasons in "The Web's Million-Dollar Typos". Those tricky sites can deceive and mislead users, and in many cases steal their "time = money", at the very least. After it's all said and done, the online user even has to worry about giving out personally identifiable information about themselves no matter what the lengthy, and in some cases "tricky", Privacy Policies say, due to "The Choice Point Debacle" and now "Thief Steals 26.5 Million Veterans' Identities" .
So, I hope you agree that something needs to be done to build more trust online, and to try to stop the theft of time and money due to intentional deception, or even just unintentional misleading, of Internet end-users. I really like the part of the "My Commencement Speech at SIMS " that Tim O'Reilly recently gave on 5/14/06 at the UC Berkeley School of Information that said: "We must engage strenuously with the future, thinking through the dark side of each opportunity, and working to maximize the good that we create while minimizing the harm." Enough said!
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