To keep personal information secure, you need to embed data privacy into all communications. That’s the key to privacy-aware communication.Â
Hundreds of millions of online conversations take place every day, across hundreds of apps, in every corner of the world. And that means threats to personal data are on the rise.
Privacy-aware communication helps you ensure the data in your communications is managed ethically, and that personal information is protected.
An approach to communications that protects users’ privacy, while still allowing organizations to make use of data.
A combination of compliance and user satisfaction. In the digital economy, companies that excel in managing data responsibly and protecting privacy will increase their brand recognition.
Ensuring data privacy is incredibly complicated, with new threats emerging all the time. What’s more, user data can be a huge source of revenue, so companies have to strike the right balance between ethics and profit.
Applications like WhatsApp use encryption to keep users’ data private. But when privacy policies change, it has a huge impact on customer loyalty.
What is it?
Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the way their data is used by online services, and they want to know their privacy is taken seriously.Â
Privacy-aware communication places these concerns at the heart of customer interactions to ensure personal details and private conversations are only ever seen by those they were intended for. In fact, many communications software providers advertise security measures as a major selling point of their solutions.
Â
By taking the appropriate steps to protect user privacy, organizations can gather the data they need, while ensuring customer confidence, building brand loyalty, and staying on the right side of compliance.
What’s in for you?
With data privacy and security at the front of users’ minds, showing them that you take these things seriously can help you attract more customers, increase loyalty, and bolster your reputation as an ethical organization.Â
With privacy-aware communications, you can gather the data you need while isolating personal information, ensuring compliance, and retaining the trust of customers and employees.
What are the trade offs?
Staying within the ethical and regulatory boundaries on the collection, use, and storage of data often requires a full team of dedicated professionals.
Â
Data is a valuable asset, so finding the right balance between protecting users’ sensitive information while still gathering the data your organization needs can be tricky.
However, data privacy isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. Letting people know about the measures you’re taking to protect their privacy can boost your reputation and increase loyalty and brand equity. But get data privacy wrong, and the damage to your brand can be significant.
How is it being used?
Communications applications like WhatsApp use encryption to protect users’ privacy. Recent changes to WhatsApp’s privacy agreements had a significant impact on customer satisfaction, demonstrating how important communication privacy is to customers.

We’ve also seen the video conferencing app Zoom suffer its own privacy and security troubles, when its daily user base went from 10 million to 200 million in less than six months during the COVID-19 outbreak.
In response, the company publicly laid out a roadmap for improving its approach to privacy and security.
Would you like to suggest a topic to be decoded?
Just leave your email address and we'll be in touch the moment it's ready.