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PRIVACY ADVOCATES CALL ON FTC TO HALT ONLINE PROFILING --
Practice Threatens Consumer Privacy
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Privacy advocates today urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to halt online profiling by Internet adverstisers pending an expedited investigation into the practice. They asked the FTC to examine the privacy and consumer implications of profiling, develop recommendations and guidelines for legislation, and establish binding legal protections for consumers. The groups maintain that industry "self-regulation" is inadequate to prevent invasions of privacy and that legislation is necessary to protect the privacy of individuals online.
A public workshop on Monday, November 8, held jointly by the FTC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration of the Department of Commerce (NTIA), will bring together privacy advocates, businesses and government officials to discuss "online profiling" -- the collection of information from individuals to create targeted Internet advertising. The advocacy groups will outline the privacy and consumer interests in preventing online profiling and call for the FTC to take action to protect consumers.
Online profiling creates detailed customer profiles of individual buying and surfing behavior on the Internet. Despite claims about the anonymity of these profiles, mergers and consolidation -- such as the one set between online advertiser DoubleClick Inc. and offline catalog tracking company Abacus Direct Corp. -- could result in far-reaching invasions of privacy. The proposed merger will bring together online profiles obtained from an estimated 850 million Internet advertisements per day and 88 million personally identifiable five-year catalog purchase histories.
According to Andrew Shen, Policy Analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the upcoming workshop "comes at a crucial time in the development of electronic commerce. We must now set the privacy standards that will govern this exploding field in the next century."
The availability of highly detailed profiles will give advertisers unfair advantages in the marketing of products, impacting consumer choice and informed decision-making. Jeff Chester, Executive Director of the Center for Media Education, adds that "we believe that, in particular, special policies are necessary to protect children, adolescents and youth."
The groups argue that self-regulation has proven and will continue to be insufficient protection for individual privacy. Jason Catlett, President of Junkbusters Corp., asserts that "the idea of self-regulation was always implausible and has been allowed to fail in practice far too often in recent years."
The privacy advocates are also calling on state attorneys general to bring legal actions in order to protect privacy interests. Robert Ellis Smith, Publisher of the Privacy Journal, suggests that consumers regain control over their privacy by turning off "cookies" -- mechanisms that play a key role in online profiling -- and staying away from commercial websites until there are adequate privacy protections in place.
CONTACT:
Center for Media
Education
Contact: Jeff Chester, Executive Director, (202) 331-7833
Electronic Privacy Information
Center
Contact: Andrew Shen, Policy Analyst, (202) 544-9240
Junkbusters
Corporation
Contact: Jason Catlett, President, (908) 753-7861
Privacy
Journal
Contact: Robert Ellis Smith, Publisher, (401) 274-7861
Privacy
Times
Contact: Evan Hendricks, Editor, (202) 829-3660