Messaging News - August 2008 - (Page 12) PRIVACY & MESSAGING in behavioral advertising have changed along with it,” observes Lydia Parnes, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection for the Federal Trade Commission. “First, behavioral advertising has become more prevalent and it’s expected to become even more widely used in the coming years. Second, marketers are seeking to expand substantially the information they collect and analyze to increase the precision of their behavioral advertising. Third, the industry has seen a recent flurry of consolidation, resulting in more consumer information in fewer hands.” Has privacy shifted with the maturation of the Internet? “From the very beginning, people could easily see how data flies on the Internet in ways they never could understand in the offline world,” observes Fran Maier, executive director of TRUSTe, a non-profit organization dedicated to building consumer trust in the Internet. “That is why TRUSTe was brought about in the first place, if consumers cannot have trust, they are not going to engage. The level of engagement now is high, but I think everyone agrees it could be so much higher, but we really need to increase the confidence online.” Maier goes on to say that historically, in the mid-1970s, fair information practices came about requiring notices, awareness, choice, access, security, integrity, enforcement, and redress. “These are still good, but I do not think they are enough going forward.” Awareness To the FTC, one of the first steps in reviewing the possible threat to privacy is consumer awareness. “One of the things we grapple with and are trying to gather information on,” says Richard Quaresima, assistant director of the Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Consumer Protection, division of Advertising Practices, “is understanding what is the consumer awareness? One of the themes that kept arising from the Town Hall was that a lot of people—in particular consumer privacy advocates—believe that the concept of tracking advertising is 12 MESSAGING NEWS AUGUST 2008 largely invisible to consumers.” The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), a non-profit public interest organization specializing in law, technology, and policy, believes that behavioral advertising poses a growing risk to consumer privacy. “Consumers are largely unaware of the practice and thus are ill equipped to make informed decisions and protect their information,” states Leslie Harris, president and CEO of CDT. “They have no expectation that their browsing information may be tracked and sold. Furthermore, consumers are rarely provided sufficient information about the practices of advertisers or others in the advertising value chain to gauge the privacy risks and make meaningful decisions about whether and how their information may be used.” Is the average consumer aware of the lengths that advertisers are tracking their information? “Probably not,” concedes Maier. “Then again, let’s think about the harm issue. I do not think behavioral targeting right now is the harmful issue that spyware was. But I think it is smart for industry and legislation and regulators to pause and say let’s take a look at it before it gets to be one of those issues. I do not know that there has been an identity theft situation or compromise because of behavioral targeting at this point and time. Even the creepy factor hasn’t quite happened as bad as you might expect. I do think there are advertisers that are taking a careful look at not targeting to a level that is way too personal.” In his address at FTC’s Town Hall meeting, Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute revealed some findings in regards to privacy. “I’m oversimplifying, but in our research about 8 percent of Americans appear to really care deeply about privacy to the point where it changes their behavior. About 70 to 72 percent are people who will probably say ‘privacy’s important, but we’re not willing to forego any inconvenience’. So, it doesn’t actually show in behavior studies any meaningful difference from the other group called privacycomplacent people, like my children who basically will post all these pictures and stuff on Facebook.” Ponemon went on to say that in general, EMEA and Latin Americans tend to be more privacy centric than people in the U.S. and Asia. Following the Town Hall meeting, FTC staff proposed some governing principles for behavioral advertising and sought comment on the principles from interested parties. The comment period closed earlier this year, and the FTC is reviewing all the comments it received. “We put out the principles to encourage greater self-regulation,” says Quaresima. “The FTC has not called for any kind of legislation or regulation in this area. We have called for selfregulation. There has been some proposed legislation at the state level, and hearings have been held in recent weeks, in particular about information that has been tracked, and information gathered through companies that have arrangements with ISPs to analyze Web traffic. That has been a particular source of concern to different people of congress.” (See ISPs, Behavioral Advertising, and Privacy on facing page.) Employee Privacy What of privacy and messaging when it comes to employees? Has our need for monitoring data leaks and auditing email translated to less privacy for the average enterprise employee? “One of the most important benefits data loss prevention and monitoring technology—as opposed to manual processes—is that it can help to avoid the uncomfortable situation of reading other employees email by instead scanning for just those things that pose a legal, financial, regulatory or competitive risk,” says Keith Crosley, director of market development, for Proofpoint. “As a result, Proofpoint feels that companies should be very clear with their employees about what channels are being monitored and what things are being monitored for.”
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