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The company intends her to guide IBM's privacy policies and lead initiatives to strengthen consumer data protection. The idea is to unify privacy issues across areas such as R&D, marketing, sales and Web strategy.

"We know that one of the great conundrums of e-business is that it gives enterprises a powerful new capability to capture and analyse massive amounts of customer information so they can serve individual customers more effectively," said IBM Chairman and CEO Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.

"Yet this very capability troubles some people, who see it as a means to disclose or exploit their personal information. These are legitimate and very real concerns, and they must be addressed if the world of e-business is to reach its full potential."