Data ownership remains open question with free analytics services

A post from CMS Watch this week looks at who really owns your content analytics data and the answers may surprise you. CMS Watch did an informal survey of four vendors looking at two fee-based vendor contracts (identified only as Vendor X and Vendor Y) along with the Terms of Service as published online by the free vendors Google and Yahoo!.

What they found was that the two fee-based vendors explicitly stated in the contract that the customer maintained control and ownership of all data one calling it "confidential information" and the other calling "your exclusive property." That's pretty cut and dry, but the free services were not so clear.

What is clear is that when you use the free services, the companies are using that data for some purpose in exchange for giving you the service. There is truly no such thing as a free lunch in this regard. Now, it's important to remember that this data is very likely aggregated data and not necessarily your actual data, but the fact that it could be, has to give some organizations pause.

The free services are great and in tough times like these. It's hard argue with free, but you should have your legal team look over the terms of service and if you're not at all comfortable, begin exploring the fee-based services.

For more information, see:
The CMS Watch post

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