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How you are seen to protect your customers’ personal information can have a huge effect on your brand – and your bottom line, according to a new report.

Security researcher Ponemon Institute released its list of the “Top 20 Most Trusted Companies for Privacy”, based on a survey of 6,627 US adults. Some 38,000 individual companies got mentioned, 229 of which were ranked more than 20 times. American Express was top of the list, followed by IBM, Johnson & Johnson, HP, and eBay.

No small businesses actually made the Top 20 – could it be because 56 percent of small businesses don’t even have a privacy policy on their Web sites? – but the Ponemon results still provide a useful lesson. Facebook, for example, made the list last year but not the current one – which comes as no surprise, as 2009 saw the site face serious security breaches as well as a very public debate about their privacy policies.

Said Larry Ponemon, the Michigan-based institute’s chairman and founder, in the report:  “Facebook draws a great deal of attention because they have chosen to innovate on the issue of privacy in a highly visible manner, and while they were rewarded for their efforts last year, consumer were less kind to them this year, showing just how important privacy protection is as a brand asset.”

Mike Spinney, a Ponemon senior privacy analyst, thinks Facebook may return to this list. On his blog he praised the company’s “transparent approach to privacy” and “typical responsiveness to public comment,” saying he believed it would serve the company well in the long run. (What other movement was there in the Top 20? Besides Facebook, AOL and eLoan dropped off the list. Four not listed the previous year who made the cut this year: Google, Weight Watchers, Walmart and AT&T.

The study also found that consumers’ feeling of control of their personal information is dropping steadily: 41 percent in 2010, down from 45 percent in 2009, which was down from 56 percent in 2006, the first year the study was conducted.

A top area of concern for those surveyed: Identity theft. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed rated the subject a major factor in how much they trust a brand. Other threats to brand trust: Abuse of civil liberties and annoying “background chatter” in public venues. Translation: Lay off the unnecessary Twitter and Facebook updates.

How can you help encourage trust? Sixty percent of those surveyed said “substantial” security protections were a huge plus, while 53 percent gave great weight to accurate data collection and use. Ponemon cautions that the latter also includes marketing. You should gather all the information you can from customers, but be careful what you do with it.

“Any time customers receive marketing that’s irrelevant or annoying, it’s a privacy issue to them,” Ponemon said.

Not surprisingly, Fran Maier, CEO of TrustE, which monitors online privacy practices, advocates a sturdy privacy policy – a survey done for the company last year revealed that of the less than half of small businesses who actually had a policy, a third had just cut and pasted it from elsewhere. (Looking for some help crafting yours? Click here.)

Niceties that may be overlooked – such as privacy – she says “are the very elements that give small businesses an edge over their competitors. Especially in times of economic downturn, a good brand reputation is something small businesses should not jeopardize.”

What do you think? Does your business have a written privacy policy? And do you think Facebook’s new policies are cause for alarm?

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If you’re thinking hateful thoughts about your colleagues or clients, don’t post them on your Facebook news feed – no matter how secure you think your privacy settings are.

Gloria Gadsden, an associate professor of sociology at Pennsylvania’s East Stroudsburg University, has been put on indefinite paid leave for what she thought was a funny Facebook update about hiring a hit man. ”Does anyone know where I can find a very discrete hitman? Yes, it’s been that kind of day,” Gadsden, 42, wrote in January. Another status update in February: “Had a good day today. DIDN’T want to kill even one student. Now Friday was a different story.”  She removed the second comment, but was nonetheless suspended after a student tipped off university higher-ups. (East Stroudsburg doesn’t have a policy of monitoring faculty social media, but a university spokesman said: “Given the climate of security concerns in academia, the university has an obligation to take all threats seriously and act accordingly.”) Gadsden, who’s worked at the university for five years, says school superiors cited the Amy Bishop case – where a biology lecturer allegedly opened fire at the University of Alabama after being told she would not be granted tenure – in suspending her. ”They found two posts, linked them together and are suggesting I was a threat,” says Gadsden, a recent convert to Facebook (she has just 32 friends), told Pennsylvania’s WNEP TV. “I told them I was venting. They’re family friends and it’s a private page.” Gadsden specifically chose not to friend students, but thinks an update to Facebook’s software altered her privacy settings and allowed friends of friends to read her musings.   Type “Facebook” and “fired” into any search engine and you’ll get an ever-growing list of people who’ve stuck a foot into the wide-open mouth that is Facebook – and it’s cost them dearly. A 2009 study by Proofpoint, an Internet security firm, found that 17 percent of companies report having issues with employees’ use of social media, and 8 percent have actually dismissed someone for their behavior on those sites. In the previous year’s study, just 4 percent were fired for their social media sins.  

All a good reason to check and re-check your Facebook privacy settings – or better yet, to confine any nasty work-related thoughts to offscreen conversations (preferably not within earshot of their subjects.) After all, Gadsden thought she had an iron curtain between her professional life and her Facebook life. “I actually did see that page as something that was not a part of ESU, not a part of my professional life,” she told USA Today. “I don’t invite students into that part of my life.”  

What was she thinking posting about wanting to kill a student? She was joking – she had a smiley face after the comment – and followup comments from friends suggest they understood the comment as humorous. (One said she was ROFL, or rolling on the floor laughing.) Gadsden said: “I had had a really bad day on Friday and then Monday went well and I was excited that it went really well. It was not intended to threaten a particular person, not directed to any student. Sometimes teaching is hard and exhausting work. Sometimes we don’t get support for that so we vent with family and friends and that’s all it was.” (For some other Facebook faux pas, click here.) The university is conducting an investigation, and Gadsden says she plans to file a grievance contesting her administrative leave.  In the meantime, Gadsden has been receiving letters of support “from around the nation, from faculty, from others who also had been target because of Facebook comments,” she said. “I don’t think there’s a definitive policy I violated so it would be nice if administration was clear about these things.”

What do you think? Were Gadsden’s bosses justified in putting her on leave? Or are employees’ Facebook comments purely private?

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I am intently watching the Olympics this year and it occurred to me, these brave and strong young people represent a business, the business of the Olympics and their country. Many even go through training on how to behave while representing their country. While watching the media hype around the games, one thing stood out: if there were going to be any remarks or behavior that weren’t humble, it usually came from a man, not a woman.

Now granted, the Olympics are hyper-competitive, more so than most businesses. So in such a competitive atmosphere, perhaps men are more self-focused than women. Here are just a few examples I’ve seen of unprofessional behavior among male athletes in Olympics past and present:

When asked to explain the team’s success, U.S. ski champion Bode Miller said, “aside from the fact that we’re just much better than anybody else…” He went on to say, “All the big events, I’ve always done well in—when I decide that’s what I want to do.” I guess he decidedly didn’t want to do well in Torino when he talked about skiing drunk in a 60 Minutes television interview. He touted that he had “an awesome two weeks while at the Olympics. I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level.”

Silver medalist figure skater Evgeni Plushenko questioned the judging, saying he was the only leading competitor to land a quadruple jump, and therefore should have secured first place over gold medalist Evan Lysacek.

In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Ara Abrahamian of Sweden threw away his bronze medal in the Greco-Roman wrestling tournament because he thought he was robbed by the judges. He took the medal from around his neck during the medal ceremony, stepped off the podium and dropped it in the middle of the mat before storming off.

Korean speed skater Lee Jung-Su criticized Apolo Ohno as “too aggressive.” “Ohno didn’t deserve to stand on the same medal platform as me.” He said that he was so mad it was hard for him to contain himself during the ceremony.

On the other hand, a few positive things I noticed from the female athletes:

Gold medal skier Lindsey Vonn, who was the center of media attention with an injured shin, is very close friends with German skier Maria Riesch, who she competes with on a regular basis. She also reportedly considers U.S. skier Julia Mancuso as a competitive rival, but neither of them seem to say anything bad about the other.

The three women on the U.S. snowboard team, Hannah Teter, Gretchen Bleiler, and Kelly Clark, all medalists at one time or another, all pull for each other and call each other great friends. They also congratulated the non-U.S. gold medal winner very warmly. They all seem to be in it for the sport.

So, how does this relate to any business? Are women more humble than men? Sure seems like it in the Olympics. It also could just be that there are more male athletes in the Olympics so it’s a game of numbers. But these “business” men and women also have to be aware of what they might get out of it at the end of all of this: a great sponsorship. We all witnessed what happened to many of Tiger’s sponsorship deals when he seemed disingenuous.

Maybe in your business you need someone who is completely self-focused and self-motivated, and that’s ok. You just need to ask yourself–are you comfortable with the people that represent you and your company’s values? When you look at men and women in your organization are there clear differences in how they represent your company? If so, are the differences what you’d want them to be? Maybe so, but it might be worth a look.

Now before I get blasted by readers, women are not immune to bad behavior in these Olympic games, as noted by the shameful incident when our own figure skaters Tonya Harding had Nancy Kerrigan attacked. And on a positive note, gold medalist snow boarder Shaun White is a gracious, charitable man who is out to give his sport a great name. So it’s not a sweeping generalization, just food for thought and an opportunity to relate these exciting Winter games to your own business like I do at my company VerticalResponse.

Hey, I think Bode Miller is a great skier and really fun to watch. I just wonder, how many of you want him on your team, no matter how great he is? It’s just something to think about for your business.

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