CNET are running a story today about IBM pulling all ad banners from sites that do not display a privacy policy. The story quotes privacy advocates as saying that one of the factors in successful ecommerce is consumer trust. My view is that I still don't trust many companies whether or not they have a privacy policy. Every week we see more abuses of personal data collected by web sites. I tend not to give out my details unless it's necessary, or I may vary it occasionally to make the correlating databases work that bit harder. Even so, some of the larger sites have managed to connect my work and home identities, probably because my different browsing patterns have some degree of overlap.