Four Missed Opportunities for Privacy

The NY Times has a blog posting on the occasion of the Internet advertising industry's release (PDF) of what it describes as tough new standards governing the collection and use of data about users' behavior. The Times' Saul Hansell describes these "new" standards as more of the same old status quo, and outlines four privacy-enhancing ideas, being discussed by Google, Yahoo, the FTC, and Congress, that the IAB has completely ignored. These principles are: every ad should explain itself; users should be able to see data collected about them; browsers should help enforce user choices about tracking; and some information (medical and financial) is simply too sensitive to track.

Comments

I'm completely shocked...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You mean that "self regulation" fails when it is opposed to self interest? Who could have guessed?

Re:I'm completely shocked...

[megamerican]

People now expect government to do everything for them including protection against their own stupidity.

It would be quite simple to organize boycotts against products and companies that don't give you adequate information. However, people have forgotten that they have much more power than a beaurocrat ever will. What they get in return for their lost vigilence are corrupt politicians who sell them out and then they wonder how things went bad.

This is just another example of "my people suffer for lack of knowledge." If you think the government will do everything for you, then you'll end up like the Obsolete Man (a great Twilight Zone episode).

Re:I'm completely shocked...

[emocomputerjock]

I think it's been proven again and again that the only privacy available on the net is that which you go and secure for yourself. You almost have to become obsessive-compulsive fighting against cookies, scripts, and counters to protect yourself nowadays.

Re:I'm completely shocked...

[FlyingSquidStudios]

Okay, but this is the real world, not an Ayn Rand fantasy utopia. People are not going to realize or want to use their powers as individuals. Many people are perfectly happy being sheep as long as they are in a comfy pasture with plenty of grass. Despite my personal distaste for that behavior, I still feel those people deserve the same basic human rights as I do. The only way to ensure they have those rights is to work within the system, not rebel against it. The only way you will get people to join your self-reliance revolution will be for them to suffer a hell of a lot more than they are now. I, for one, am thankful we don't live in a world that desperate yet.

Mostly not going to happen

[Nautical Insanity]

Ads will never "explain themselves" and companies will never reveal how much information they harvest from you (outside of lengthy, dull, usage terms written in Jargon.) Either case would make users skittish, and there's too much money involved for either them or congress to want to do anything about it.

As for medical and financial information, it's incredibly sensitive, yes, but having it tracked is incredibly convenient for both lay people and companies (if inconvenient for the IT staff who have to secure them.) Either way, these records have to be kept somewhere and somehow and be accessible in some way to people who need them (doctors and banks.)

The only change I see possible is improvement in the browsers. If any privacy change does occur, you can bet that it will start with either Firefox, Opera, or some non-mainstream browser, and then be eventually adopted by IE. Don't expect the end-users to know how to enable any privacy features though.

Valid but not simple?

[nine-times]

One thing that caught my attention in the summary:

users should be able to see data collected about them

Seems like a very valid sort of thing to want. If your company has information about me, I should be able to know what information you have. Common sense, right?

On the other hand, if you're going to talk about something like this, don't you also have to talk about other increases in security to go along with the additional transparency? If you're going to make it increasingly easy for me to see information about me, it should go hand in hand with making it increasingly difficult for someone who is not-me to access that information about me.

I really think it's time that we talk about improving our security models. SSL on everything would be a good start.

Re:Valid but not simple?

[funkatron]

In Britain the data protection act means that you can write to any company and request all of the data that they hold on you. However, the company is allowed to charge up to £10 to cover the costs of finding this data. I'm not sure what level of security is required tho.

Solution

[Sarcasmooo!]

Install adblock extension, disable 3rd party cookie files, use software that ads advertising domains to your hosts file.

As far as I can tell the internet doesn't even have banner ads anymore.

Meh

[SirGarlon]

When it comes to privacy, there are much bigger issues than the pervasive use of tracking cookies. (For example: indefinite data retention after a customer has stopped doing business with a vendor, sale of customer data without explicit opt-in, and let's not forget the pervasive failure of government agencies to encrypt sensitive data like Social Security numbers.) Tracking cookies seem quaint and harmless by comparison... this article reminds me of the privacy issues we used to worry about back in 1999.