MANAMA: Only seven per cent of businesses in Bahrain strictly apply customer data privacy rules, although 65pc of them have well-defined policies, reveals a new survey.
Conducted by Centurion Consulting on behalf of global technology firm Zoho Corp, the study also found that a whopping 96pc of businesses in the country use third-party trackers and ad-platforms.
The same number of respondents say they are not clearly disclosing their use of third-party trackers on their websites to collect visitors’ data.
Furthermore, 98pc of those surveyed, mostly MSMEs, said they outsourced their website management and marketing functions, and were confident that the regulatory compliances would be followed by the service providers.
As per the survey, the main reasons for the use of third-party trackers are: tracking the effectiveness of an ad-campaign (79pc), sharing content on social media (56pc) and gathering analytics on website visitors (45pc).
In fact, 67pc of businesses say the third-party trackers and ad platforms are helpful in meeting their sales objective, while a further 26pc say it is the primary factor in achieving their sales goals.
Another key finding is that companies assume data collection tools – most respondents use multiple vendors – would inherently abide by strict legal laws and standards and therefore customer data is safe.
The survey showed that the bigger the name of the tracking company, the higher the respondents’ confidence that the information would not be misused.
This is despite several large vendors being recently fined for violating privacy laws in other nations.
The study revealed that just 18pc of the respondents are fully acquainted with regional data protection laws.
Interestingly, these are companies with over 100 employees.
“This rampant use of third-party trackers in the business space has severe ethical and privacy implications because of the enormous amounts of customer data being gathered through them,” said Hyther Nizam, president-MEA, Zoho Corp.
“However, consumers are growing more privacy conscious by the day, and more countries are implementing stringent laws to protect consumer’s data and privacy. In the long-run, these businesses will need to rethink their reliance on third-party platforms in order to stay relevant, and gain the trust of their users.”
Data protection in Bahrain is currently governed by the Personal Data Protection Law (Law No. (30) of 2018).
All businesses in Bahrain are bound by the law, which regulates the processing and transfer of data in the region.
Penalties for violation can go up to a maximum of BD20,000 in fines and imprisonment of one year where prison sentences apply.
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