Messaging News - August 2008 - (Page 11) Privacy & by Stephanie Jordan e are perhaps in the golden age of the Internet. It is free, uncensored, and unites the world in ways hard to imagine for our grandparents, who relied on such things as the Western Union telegram. In the 1920s and ‘30s a telegram was cheaper than a long-distance call. It may even have been the precursor to texting because punctuation cost extra leading to brevity in the extreme with pronouns, and verbs omitted—the word STOP substituted for a period. For us today, email or VoIP are cheaper than an overseas telephone call. But along with this amazing openness, information availability, and inexpensive communications, has come the desire to make money online. Once the Internet began to mainstream, e-commerce was not far behind and along with it came marketing and advertising. Of late there has been much discussion about behavioral targeting, Messaging “Many networks avoid linking profiles to what has traditionally been considered ‘personally identifiable information’ (PII)— names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, and other identifiers. But as the comprehensiveness of consumer advertising profiles increases, the ability to link specific individuals to profiles is growing.”—Leslie Harris, Center for Democracy & Technology W which is not really a new industry. It has been used in direct marketing, telemarketing and through publishers for many years. In the past, information about geographic location, purchase history and the like were used to target content. And it worked. Lately, however, we hear more and more from privacy advocates about online behavioral advertising and targeting tactics. This is largely because the barrier to collecting consumer information is substantially lower online. Unlike with direct mail, there are no wasted stamps or paper. Last November the Federal Trade Commission held a Town Hall to exam behavioral advertising and consumer protection. The meeting explored the types of information that companies collect about consumers as they travel across the Internet, and whether the information collected is anonymous or personally identifiable. A key focus was on how this information is used and shared, and what consumers understand about the collection of information online. A goal of the meeting was to determine if these practices are resulting in consumer harm and loss of privacy. Why now? It is not really surprising if you think about it. The advertising industry is transforming itself, forming new combinations and developing new strategies to take full advantage of what the Internet has to offer. Online companies of all types are moving into the advertising space or expanding their presence in order to generate revenue and enhance or complement other services offered by their businesses. The Commission has examined behavior advertising in the past, including a 1999 Online Profiling workshop. “The advertising market has changed dramatically since our earlier workshop in 1999 and the practices involved messagingnews.com 11 http://www.messagingnews.com
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