Commentary
Uncomfortably Numb
- by Mitch Oscar , Op-Ed Contributor, November 3, 2009
Five weeks ago I caught a Forbes article, "The Looming Battle Over Targeted Ads," informatively written by Evan Hessel. He divided his assessment of the online targeted ads debate into four categories, which I paraphrase liberally:
How Targeting Is Currently Regulated
Transparency and Consumer Control: web sites have to tell customers what type of data they are collecting and how it will be used as well as giving them the choice of opting out of data collection.
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Data Security: companies can only retain user data as long as it fulfills a legitimate business purpose while concurrently protecting it from falling into unauthorized hands.
Consent for Policy Changes: if a company decides to change the way it exploits previously collected user data, it must notify users in advance.
Consent for "Sensitive Data": companies must obtain prior consent from users before collecting sensitive personal information - though what is "sensitive" is not clearly defined by the FTC.
What Privacy Advocates Want
Regulation: legislation regulating online privacy that formalizes and expands the FTC's current recommended principles.
Privacy Information: to ban companies obtaining privacy information such as data about health, finances, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, personal relationship or political activity.
Personal Data: regulation that forces sites and data collection firms to specify what the personal and behavioral data volunteered by users will be used for at the time of collection and provide users an easy mechanism to block data gathering.
Disclosure: legislation requiring increased disclosure of behavioral tracking in the form of registration in a database at the FTC as well as enabling consumers to obtain all information utilized by targeter.
What Publishers Want
Regulation: opposition to the establishment of actual laws regulating behavioral targeting in favor of self regulation.
Opting Out: consumers should utilize controls on their web browsers and/or purchase, at their own expense, additional software to block the web site's collection of user information.
Data Usage: oppose calls to ban changes to data use policies without user consent. Web sites should be able to change their policies regarding privacy and user data without consent as long as users were previously advised that changes could take place.
Sensitive Data: oppose the privacy advocates' calls to outlaw the collection of sensitive data (personal medical conditions, financial situations and politics...) without consent as long as the information is not attributed to a specific person's name.
What Advertising Tech Companies Want
Regulation: opposition to formal laws on targeting in favor of self-regulation.
Sensitive Data: against a ban on collection of non-personally attributed information pertaining to medical issues, personal politics, politics....
As the debate continues over privacy and the utilization of information (sometimes sensitive and sometimes not - though who is to know for sure) for marketing and targeting and as monolithic entities, trade organizations and politicos are haggling over the future usage of my social security, all I can say is:
& nbsp; h.......e.......l.......p!
&n bsp; "hello...hello...hello
&nb sp; ; is there anybody out there
& nbsp; just nod if you can hear me
&n bsp; &nbs p; is there anyone at home."
; Mr. & Mrs. Floyd and their 13-year-old son, Zach
When the Government wants "to protect you" -- look for a growing bureaucracy staffed by the friends of those doing all the planning.
I think the Government won't be happy until it "controls" us all, because they know best and we're just too stupid to protect ourselves.
The industry risks big headaches if they oppose privacy regs. There was a major recent study from an academic behavioral social science research institute that showed 83% of people were against digital BT, and 50% felt officers of companies that invaded privacy should go to jail. I think people need to think rationally. There is no inherent inalienable right to collect personal data on people without them knowing it. And advertising should be benevolent in nature, which is in the best interest of the industry.
This is a discussion that has played out mostly in the online world but has big ramifications in the TV world, especially with the increased interest and availability of STB data. Are TV viewers more tolerant or less tolerant of data about tuning being collected and used for behavioral targeting? While searching for the answer, TV's strategy might be to let the online world grapple with the core issues in public, while TV keeps a low profile and continues to collect anonymous data.
The advertising industry hasn't yet convinced privacy advocates and the government that self-regulation works, in large part because until now, no one has asked publishers (websites) to step up to help provide more disclosure. Websites are where behavioral data is collected and applied, but the policies are dispersed across hundreds of ad-network websites that are virtually unknown to consumers.
Our approach with the PrivacyWidget is to bring all of that information and those choices together in one place for the consumer right in the context where they care -- the webpage. See for yourself what this looks like:
http://www.privacywidget.com
We're testing now with publishers to demonstrate how consumers interact with this information and how it affects their comfort and satisfaction.
Yeah, we are too stupid to protect ourselves. And the others are too greedy to take advantage of that stupidity.Take the morgage mess which is not just about the stupid people going to settlement without an attorney or calculator; it's about the derivitives and the extreme complications that are making you poorer or very, very wealthy and we are too stupid to ask questions. They control you and no one, unless it is a government (maybe not preferable, but the only fallback) controls them. Take religion - in so many ways - controls you and denies you your humanity. If it weren't for government to separate and protect you from those who would control you and your choices. BT - again with the control. It's either them who control you or government has to step in to stop it. You don't have the power to control no.