Forum to focus on online privacy
By Verne Kopytoff
San
Francisco Chronicle
November 1, 2007
To
marketers, being able to track consumers online and
offer them personalized pitches is considered good
business. But privacy advocates hold a different view,
calling such technology the incarnation of George
Orwell's Big Brother.
The two sides will air their differences at a two-day
public forum starting today hosted by the Federal Trade
Commission in Washington. The meeting will pit the
Internet industry's biggest and wealthiest companies -
Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. - against a
bevy of public interest groups.
At issue is how much information Internet companies
should be able to collect about users as they flit
across the Web. As it is, the industry keeps troves of
data about users that help fuel the fast-growing online
advertising business, which is expected to generate $20
billion in revenue this year.
Jeff Chester, executive director of Center for Digital
Democracy, a digital rights group whose complaints
helped spur the FTC to call today's meeting, likened the
collection of user data by the Internet companies to
"wholesale commercial surveillance."
He said consumers largely are unaware of the amount of
information compiled about their habits.
"What they see, what they do, what kind of searches they
do is all harvested, tabulated and spread across the
vast media without consent," Chester said. "It troubles
me."
In a follow-up complaint to be filed today, he along
with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group will ask
the FTC to pay particular attention to data retained
about children and the information collection practices
and privacy policies of popular social-networking sites
Facebook and MySpace, where users often list interests,
ages and cities.
Randall Rothenberg, chief executive of the Interactive
Advertising Bureau, an online industry trade group,
advocates self-regulation in remarks to be given to the
commission today.
He warns the agency about the dangers of regulation
getting in the way of the industry's innovation and says
people welcome ads that are tailored to their tastes.
"It is incumbent on the business community to ensure
that interactive advertising, marketing and data-use
practices are responsible," Rothenberg said.
"At the same time, government must be prudent in
ensuring that no regulation is drawn that would curtail
interactive advertising's potential to continue to
support this extraordinary pattern of innovation and
consumer benefit."
No immediate decisions about online privacy are expected
to come out of out of the FTC's meeting. The
commission's staff may eventually issue a report, or
call another meeting, although even that is unclear.
On Wednesday, nine privacy groups called on the Federal
Trade Commission to create a Do Not Track List modeled
after the national Do Not Call List, which allows people
to avoid telemarketing calls. Internet users would be
able to ask that their online activities not be tracked,
stored or used by marketers.
The technology wouldn't necessarily reduce the number of
ads that consumers see. But Internet users who sign up
no longer would be subjected to ads tailored
specifically to their online behavior.
AOL, part of Time Warner Inc., said Wednesday that it
would implement a program similar to Do Not Track by the
end of the year for its Web properties and all 7,000 Web
sites in its advertising networks.
The technology would keep users' preferences even if
users delete cookies, the small bits of software stored
on their computers that allow their activities to be
tracked.
The FTC's meeting is happening against the backdrop of
Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of
DoubleClick, an online advertising company.
The agency is reviewing the merger because of antitrust
concerns, under the watchful eyes of privacy advocates,
who say the marriage would lead to even more detailed
tracking of Internet user behavior, an accusation that
Google vigorously denies.