Privacy vs convenience: the future of our client portal
How Society Service plans to improve privacy, data retention and convenience
The more we know about our clients, the easier it is to assist them. But at Society Service, we deal with information that can be highly confidential. Privacy and convenience therefore regularly come into conflict. We have to make choices, and in the future, we want to give our clients more opportunities to decide where their own priorities lie. Meanwhile, we already delete personal data automatically and are working on further improvements to our client portal, data protection and the way we retain information.
In our previous blog, Why we take identity verification seriously, we explained why we cannot simply assist an existing client who contacts us from an unfamiliar email address or phone number. This may require additional verification and cause some inconvenience, but it prevents us from disclosing confidential information to the wrong person. The same balance between privacy and convenience also plays a role behind the scenes, in the way we organise our administration and develop our client portal. In this blog, we would like to share more about our plans.
Personalised escort matchmaking without keeping everything
One of the advantages of Society Service is that we get to know our clients. We know which escorts someone has previously met, what matters to them and which personal preferences may be relevant when suggesting a new match. This allows us to offer much more considered advice than simply presenting an availability calendar and a collection of attractive photographs.
Of course, it would be wonderfully convenient if we also kept every phone number, every email exchange and every other piece of personal information indefinitely. We would never have to ask anyone for the same details twice. From an administrative perspective, that might sound appealing, but from a privacy perspective, it is a considerably less brilliant idea. A compromised account at your average online retailer is unlikely to lead to awkward conversations around the dinner table. An account with an escort agency might be a rather different story.
That is why we already automatically delete or anonymise personal data when clients have not made a booking for an extended period. After three, five and seven years without a booking, a client profile goes through successive stages in which progressively less information is retained, while naturally respecting legal retention obligations and other legitimate reasons for keeping certain records. We intend to refine this automated deletion and anonymisation process further, so that information is not retained for longer than necessary.
Keeping identifying information separate from booking details
An important part of our plans is to further separate personally identifiable information from escort booking records and personal preferences. For effective matchmaking, it is useful to know which escorts someone has previously met and what their preferences are. But that information does not need to be permanently linked directly to their full name, phone number and email address.
We are therefore exploring ways to work with protected client profiles as much as possible in our day-to-day matchmaking activities. The link to someone's actual identity should only be accessible when genuinely necessary. Recent security vulnerabilities, including a PHP vulnerability that affected us, underline the importance of limiting the potential consequences of a data breach. AI is also making certain forms of cybercrime more accessible and scalable. The simple principle that 'what you don't have can't be leaked' is therefore becoming increasingly important.
Choosing between greater privacy and greater convenience
We also want to give clients more control over the information we retain. Some clients appreciate having their contact details on file so that arranging another booking is as straightforward as possible. Some may use a dedicated, anonymous email address for this purpose. Others would prefer their contact information to be deleted after a booking, even if that means providing their details again or verifying their identity when arranging their next appointment.
We are therefore exploring the possibility of offering different privacy levels within the client portal. Legal retention requirements and necessary security measures will, of course, continue to apply. Greater privacy sometimes means less convenience, and vice versa. What matters to us is that clients understand the consequences of their choices and, wherever possible, can make those decisions themselves.
The client portal as a central hub for bookings and communication
Our redesigned client portal is already in use and makes several aspects of the booking process easier. It also allows us to share information that we deliberately do not make publicly available on our website. After making a booking, clients can access additional information about their escort, including personal interests and hobbies. Travel updates from our escorts can also be shared within a restricted environment.
The next step is to move a greater proportion of our communication into the client portal. At present, confidential information is still exchanged through email, telephone calls and our administrative systems. This is not always ideal when we want to protect, manage and delete information consistently. With an integrated messaging feature, we want to enable clients and escorts to communicate with Society Service through their own secure environments, without unnecessarily spreading personal information across different channels.
Ultimately, we want the client portal to do more than make bookings easier. We want it to become a central place where clients can manage their personal information, privacy preferences and communications. Some improvements will be visible through new features, while others will take place entirely behind the scenes. We are currently working out the details of these plans.
Our goal is not to know as little as possible about our clients, but to retain as little information as possible that we do not need or that could identify an individual. At the same time, we want to make our service more personal and convenient. This sometimes requires difficult choices between privacy and convenience, but by making those choices more deliberately and, wherever possible, leaving them to our clients, we hope to make significant progress on both fronts.