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Erica DeLorenzo: November 2007 Archives
In my last entry, I tried to give
you a straightforward depiction of how privacy policies and practices
are being made available to consumers. Important, but most people will
probably not find that terribly exciting. However, in the last
session, Lorrie Faith Cranor from Carnegie Mellon told us that in her
research, after reading and searching within a privacy policy, 98%
respondents correctly answered the question, “Does Acme site use
cookies?” That’s good news, but there are folks in the industry who
are concerned that consumers do not understand what cookies are how
they work or why they are used.
Well hold onto your seats because we
now move to the results of a contest, held by the Berkman Center for
Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, using the magic of
YouTube. Consumers were asked to create a video clip to answer the
question, “What is a Cookie?” Five finalists were selected and our own
VP of Public Policy, Mike Zaneis, was asked to be one of the judges to
select the winner. You can watch these insightful, helpful and witty
clips at http://youtube.com/group/cookiecrumble.
…And This is How the Cookie CrumblesSurprising to some, but not to
others, the videos were relatively accurate, non-inflammatory and
matter-of-fact. None of the contestants professed fear of cookies or
mistook them for spyware. They even went so far to explain the various
mechanisms available to them to manage and express their cookie
preferences, in addition to recognizing the benefits of relevant
messages delivered to them because of this technology.
Simply put, without certain technology, like cookies, websites have no memory. These technologies were first created to make things like online shopping carts possible; to make the very idea of ecommerce a reality. It is not a secret that cookies enable maintenance of website preferences and personalization. And - shock! (to paraphrase Trevor Hughes, Executive Director of the Network Advertising Initiative) - they allow for relevant advertising and marketing, giving consumers the commercial information they are more likely to want, when they want it, where they want it. And though it has been alleged, no one at the Town Hall has been able to demonstrate the harm in receiving a piece of relevant marketing or advertising in connection with free news, information, opinion, or, for example, an email service.
To Jeff Chester, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy, and his point about needing to ensure the diversification and democratization of content, 12 million Americans are blogging. Personal publishing is here, it’s subsidized by advertising, and there is no shame in that. It is possibly worth exploring the level to which consumers understand this concept, but identifying a need for education does not justify qualifying online media and marketing as “unsafe”.
Welcome to Day 2 of the FTC ehavioral
Advertising Town Hall. The audience has not waned in number or interest
and it promises to be another day of dialogue, debate and, hopefully,
increased appreciation of advertising-subsidized online content and
services.
The first panel focused on
Disclosures to Consumers: the ways they are currently made, how they’re
being improved, and if consumers read, act on or are even aware of
these notices. To be sure, devising the best mechanisms to provide both
the most meaningful consumer experience as well as maintaining consumer
trust is not an easy task. As was noted today by Martin Abrams,
Executive Director at The Center for Information Policy Leadership,
consumers just do not universally have the time to (or maybe even
interest in) learn more about how their browsing behavior is being used
to deliver more targeted, relevant commercial messages.
So we may never reach all of the
people all of the time with this information, no matter how transparent
and verbose. Rather, he says, we need to identify the role of the
privacy notice itself. What these posted policies do is create a sense
of accountability by defining how you can expect organization is going
to behave and provide the mechanism against which an organization’s
practices can be measured by the appropriate regulatory bodies. That’s
very different than forcing consumers to read notices and police the
market themselves.
Reaching Out
The good news is that, in addition to voluntarily
developing these important and publicly available policies (note: there
currently is no regulatory scheme that requires companies to post
privacy policies), the trusted online media brands are continuing to
experiment with new ways to give consumers the information and tools
they might want in order to understand and manage their browsing and
advertising preferences. Unlike the CDT-proposed government owned and
operated “Do Not Track List”, this double-layered approach further
supports consumers’ control of their online experiences while
simultaneously supporting their continued access to the news,
information and services they want.
Yesterday AOL announced a new program
designed to give consumers “enhanced notice and information about
behaviorally targeted advertising.” The program involves the delivery
of millions of public service banner ads across the AOL third-party
networks, which reach 91% of the U.S. online audience. AOL joins a
growing list of leading online publishers and portals who continue to
evolve their privacy policies and practices, with the latest and most
noteworthy announcements being made in the last few months.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all
loudly announced a shortening of the period in which they’ll make
anonymous search logs from its users. Google has launched a Privacy
Channel on YouTube to try and reach its users by video, explaining its
policies and practices by the very nature of one of the web’s most
popular innovations.
This morning, Scott Shipman, Chief
Privacy Counsel at eBay, demonstrated his company’s experimentation
with creating a link directly from ad content to information about that
ad and how it got there. They’re testing various placements and labels
that would make it easy for a consumer, if they so chose, to find out
more or express their preference about advertising customization. If
it’s not of interest or concern, the consumer can move on with the
reason they went to the eBay site in the first place.
