Fresh Views at Agency Overseeing Online Ads
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD August 5, 2009
Most of the online world is based on a simple, if unarticulated, agreement: consumers browse Web sites free, and in return, they give up data - like their gender or income level - which the sites use to aim their advertisements.
The new head of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission, David C. Vladeck, says it is time for that to change. In an interview, Mr. Vladeck outlined plans that could upset the online advertising ecosystem. Privacy policies have become useless, the commission's standards for the cases it reviews are too narrow, and some online tracking is "Orwellian," Mr. Vladeck said.
After eight years of what privacy advocates and the industry saw as a relatively pro-business commission, Mr. Vladeck, has made a splash. In June, the commission settled a case with Sears that was a warning shot to companies that thought their privacy policies protected them. In just over six weeks on the job, he has asked Congress for a bigger budget and for a streamlined way to create regulations. And he said he would hire technologists to help analyze online marketers' tracking.
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As I've said before, the Internet users who participate in social-networking sites, text-messaging sites, etc. are giving up something that they didn't even know they had, and they're going to regret it soon. The social maps being constructed by major marketing research firms allow salesmen to jump over the last wall of privacy that surrounds pre-Internet Americans: they will soon be able to get a printout that tells them the names of your friends.
If a salesman calls me and says I need life insurance, it's a 50/50 bet whether I'll listen to his shpiel and then ask why he doesn't respect the do-not-call list, or if I'll just push one of the touch-tone buttons while I hang the phone up.
However, the odds are good that if he calls me and mentions the name of one of my friends, that I'll give him that all-important sixty seconds he needs to make his pitch and set his hook, and now, or very soon, he'll have a long list of names to drop.
This is not new: charitable organizations have been using 'local' fundraisers for years, involving well-meaning busybodies who call their friends, their neighbors, and their cow-orkers to push the worthy-cause-du-jour. The victims don't want to offend, and even if they don't choose to participate, the charity hasn't lost anything they were ever going to get by another means.
What is different with the Internet is the scale, and what it can deliver as targets for the pitchmen: the victims are tweenty-somethings(TM) who don't have enough life-experience to spot a pirate on the horizon. These new-to-the-market lambs are, by sharing personal information online, lining up for shearing as they prepare for the biggest buying spree of their lives - their first house, their first car, their first health-care choice, their first hospital stay, their first insurance contract, their first chimney cleaning, their first offer of eternal rest, their first swimming pool, their first roof repair, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
That's the funny thing about privacy: we don't miss it until it's gone.
Bill Horne Copyright (C) 2009 E.W. Horne. All rights reserved.