Today I read a blog post talking about a new service from Toluna called SafeView, a method of reducing the risk of respondents copying and sharing information from market research studies. I think sensible measures to protect the intellectual property of clients are great, and the system from Toluna looks like a good addition to the tools available to discourage copying.
But I also think that at the same time we need to stress to clients that these approaches make it less easy copy, they do not prevent it. There is a constant battle between protection systems and copying systems, which tend to favour the copying technologies at any particular moment in time.
However, a more fundamental point is that most phones in the developed markets have cameras. Indeedm in the West about 50% of new phone sales are smartphones. The image below was taken on my iPhone and emailed within seconds to my blog. If it had been something really contentious I could have posted it to my Twitter account just as easily.
The big message for clients is that nothing on the Internet is truly safe. Major corporations and Governments do not seem able to keep their online stuff safe, so online market research will never be totally safe. If you need to test something truly confidential, do it face-to-face, put people through scanners to ensure they do not have phones or cameras (hand held scanners can be bought quite cheaply), check high quality photo-ID (such as drivers licences), pay them enough for it to count as a commercial contract to supply services, and get them to sign a form to say they will financially compensate you if they break their confidentiality contract. Then you would be pretty safe - the risk of your own staff leaking things would probably then be a bigger risk.
PS I am not pretty much on leave until January 11, I will be checking things from time-to-time, and I will be working on my new book, but I will be staying off the net as much as I can.
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