In an attempt to stop data theft, Lotame has designed a feature in Crowd Control, its data management platform, to protect against unauthorized third-party tags collecting data from site visitors on Web pages. The tool, made possible through a partnership with The Media Trust, gives publishers data on companies dropping cookies on their site traffic. Data protection for publishers and marketers is increasingly important as sophisticated technologies make site visitor and Web browsing behavior the key to successful ad targeting. Many times publishers are unaware of the amount of cookies being dropped on site visitors, and marketers don’t realize the amount of data being "hijacked," said Andy Monfried, Lotame founder and CEO. "They don't know who drops cookies on their Web site visitors," he said. "This lets us put a flag in the ground and protect publishers' data." Monfried said when a company drops one master cookie, six can follow without the publisher knowing third-party companies shuffle the data to others. Lotame manages 1.5 billion profiles monthly, and he believes data protection remains one of the most important functions of data management platforms (DMPs). Kalyan Lanka, Lotame VP of product management, said if one company gets approval from a publisher to sell site visitor data, it may pass data to DSPs or exchanges without the knowledge of the client. Through the partnership, The Data Protection tool aims to stop this from happening. Publishers, ad networks and marketers can collect online, offline, CRM, mobile and Web analytics data into one platform for audience targeting and optimization. This is the first time Lotame brought in a third-party company to support a feature in its platform, other than semantic targeting. Aside from stopping data theft by monitoring third-parties firing tags on their Web sites, the tool ensures encryption is maintained and supports custom alerts and transparency reports for tag approval.