Rep. Speier of California starts the ‘Do Not Track’ ball rolling
On Friday, Feb 9, 2011 Jackie Speier (D-CA) introduced H.R.654, a bill designed to take the next step forward in protecting consumers’ privacy on the internet. Several items caught my attention.
The first thing to know is that this is not a bill that produces law. It is a bill that encourages the FTC to take action within 18 months. There are no clear definitions of how any of the Do Not Track processes would work, just that they should be there and they should be enforced and that the FTC has a year and a half to figure it out.
read moreThe ‘Do Not Track’ Minefield
The privacy landscape is bumpy and dangerous. It all started with the FTC’s report in early December. A distant cry was heard calling for a system like ‘Do Not Call’ that could apply to internet advertising and solve the woes of the consumer, protecting them from the evils of behavioral tracking. Shortly thereafter, we hear that Microsoft is planning a do not track option in the next version of Internet Explorer. Then this month Mozilla announced that it will provide a unique new type of header that when set, will tell websites not to track this particular user. And to cap it all off we have the DMA proposal of placing a little icon on every ad allowing the consumer to click on the icon, read privacy policies and then decide whether to allow that advertiser or not.
Behavioral Tracking or Voodoo?
The idea that watching which sites you visit allows someone to predict your purchasing behavior is a little like Voodoo. And each different behavioral tracking advertising vendor claims to have cracked the art and found the magic voodoo juju. But have they? I don’t think so.
Many advertisers believe that if they stick a needle in your leg (or set a browser cookie… hey, it’s a metaphor ok?) while you are shopping for a new cookbook, that tells them you want a cookbook and so they’ll nag you and nag you as you surf around the web trying to get you to go back to that site to buy more cookbooks. This is called re-targeting. But re-targeting almost never works. Especially when a particular re-targeter spans a large part of the web and you are hounded for cookbooks on every site you visit, many times with 2 or 3 ads per page. What it usually causes is resentment, not a conciliatory action that results in a purchase.
What Happens in Vegas, Stays on Facebook
When the Las Vegas visitors bureau came up with the catchy phrase, ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’, I doubt if they were suggesting that visitors travel to their fair city solely for the purpose of committing adultery. But it does appeal to an inner self in all of us that craves “letting our hair down” and hopefully, keeping those moments private. As comedian/actor Dane Cook says, “It happened. It only happened there. And it happened far enough away to have any negative effect on the ‘the here and now’. And anyone who wasn’t there at the time need not know about it.”
But protecting your privacy regarding what happens in Las Vegas goes only as far as your friend’s video-equipped cellphone can broadcast it. The belief that any public action you take in any city could in any way be private is as absurd as ‘non smoking’ sections within a restaurant. You may not want the smoke to drift your way but someone forgot to tell the smoke that it had to stay on the other side of the room. You may WANT your activities to remain private, but what is embarrassing to you is most assuredly hilarious to a bystander equipped with a high-definition cell phone camera and an always-on internet connection providing a direct pipeline to Facebook and all of his waiting friends.
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