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Privacy Commissioner of Canada Rules Bell's Targeted Ad Program Violates the Law

Posted by Soulskill on from the blames-the-maple-leafs'-management dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has released the long-awaited decision on Bell's targeted ads program. The Commissioner's press release soft-pedals the outcome — "Bell advertising program raises privacy concerns" — but the decision is clear: Bell's so-called relevant ads program violates Canadian privacy law. As Michael Geist explains, the key issue in the case focused on whether Bell should be permitted to use an opt-out consent mechanism in which its millions of customers are all included in targeted advertising unless they take pro-active steps to opt-out, or if an opt-in consent model is more appropriate. The Commissioner ruled that opt-in consent is needed, but Bell is refusing to comply with the ruling.

28 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Jail? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

    >Bell's so-called relevant ads program violates Canadian privacy law.
    >Bell is refusing to comply with the ruling.

    So who's going to jail?

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    1. Re:Jail? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      >Bell's so-called relevant ads program violates Canadian privacy law.
      >Bell is refusing to comply with the ruling.

      So who's going to jail?

      While they figure out who is "not" responsible, the company should be fined a million dollars a day, doubled each day they refuse to comply. Give them a market incentive to establish clear lines of command and control and compliance.

    2. Re:Jail? by BitterOak · · Score: 2

      >Bell's so-called relevant ads program violates Canadian privacy law. >Bell is refusing to comply with the ruling.

      So who's going to jail?

      No one yet. As the summary states, this finding was by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, not a court. The next step would be for the Canadian version of the Justice Department (probably a Crown Attorney's office) to decide if criminal laws were violated and if so whether they want to press charges. If they do, there would then be a trial. So we're a long way away from anyone going to jail. I'm not sure if the Privacy Commissioner has the power to levy fines, but if so, they could certainly be challenged in court.

      --
      If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
    3. Re:Jail? by penix1 · · Score: 1

      Fines don't work at all. It is built into the price as a "cost of doing business".

      Hit the corporation where it really does hurt. Suspend their corporate charter. That removes the legal protections the corporation has allowing the shareholders as well as the executives to be held liable for illegal misdoings. You will quickly see a change in their behavior once the shareholders can be sued for enabling the bad conduct...

      --
      This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
    4. Re:Jail? by uolamer · · Score: 1

      Fines can work if they are high enough. Yeah a lot of the fines we hear about are not enough to cause a company to change their actions, but $1k per day per customer would be much more than the cost of doing business.

      I am all for "Suspend their corporate charter" also though :)

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      s/©//g
    5. Re:Jail? by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      I am all for "Suspend their corporate charter" also though :)

      I take it you're pretty sure your 401K doesn't include any of their stock?

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    6. Re:Jail? by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Probably the privacy commissioner for interfering with the economy, but not until after the election. This government exists to serve corporations, not the people. Though if Bell's media division doesn't give the Conservatives favourable press who knows.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    7. Re:Jail? by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Given that we are discussing a Canadian company without any real operating presence in the US, it is unlikely to be a significant part of any 401K.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    8. Re:Jail? by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      in some countries they work. that is, they either change the corporation/individual to change their behavior or go bankrupt. it's rather common for the fine to indeed double every x days they don't comply. that's where the fine is indeed intended to work for preventing.

      some systems treat fines as fees though, in such systems you just pay the fine as a fee and carry on - such systems tend to not work so well(i've lived in a country that uses the other system and in a country with the another system.. in this another country for example if I'm caught driving without papers and I pay the 5 bucks fee-fine, I'm fine to drive around for 24hours before being fined again - in the country I'm from they would not let me drive unless they could check that I was qualified to drive and would certainly give me a higher fine if they caught me twice inside 24 hours. and generally this another country is a lot less stable, rich people do whatever the fuck they want, elections might be held next year, might not and so on).

      of course, in such a case there can't be off-court negotiations, that means no plea deal bullshit bribery&coercion. makes the justice system so much simpler you know.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    9. Re:Jail? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      Suspending the corporate charter may work, but it would be a horrifically messy way of doing things - the company would immediately suspend all operations, including service delivery to all its customers for the duration. How well would that go down, a million or so people (no idea of subscriber rates here) suddenly without internet and phone service.

      The government would then have to react to that, but how? Un-suspend the corporate charter? Enact some emergency legislation allowing them to take over the running of the services? What? And if they do take over the running of the services, how do you compel all the workers to do their work?

    10. Re:Jail? by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      The government would then have to react to that

      Why? The market will sort it all out. After all, the only thing suspending the corporate charter does is remove undue governmental influences from the market anyway (since that's what incorporation is: government meddling to give special status).

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    11. Re:Jail? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      Yeah, the market will sort that out. Meanwhile that companies subscriber base has no service - so if they all immediately switch to a different provider, how long do you think that will take? Here in the UK it takes 2 weeks minimum to get an activation date on an ADSL line - but what if you don't have a telephone line installed, what if you only have the old companies cable line or whatever?

      What do you think is going to happen then? The subscriber base merrily playing along and saying "yup, they deserved it, glad I'm not receiving any service because the company I use broke the rules, glad I'm going to be without internet for days or weeks because thats how long it takes to switch the line, glad I have to go through all that bother"?

      No, those people are going to be screaming at the top of their voices, and they will be screaming at the government.

    12. Re:Jail? by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      What? You mean the Randian tea party bullshit I posted was wrong? I'm shocked -- shocked!

      (My previous post was an experiment in satire. Thanks for playing along.)

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  2. Bell v. Canada by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    place your bets.

    1. Re:Bell v. Canada by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Canada.

      The CRTC has been slapping bell into the dirt for a while as it stands. The federal government has in turned threatened to rip their mandate away and create a new federal agency if they didn't smarten the hell up. There is also a huge problem where bell was caught influencing news broadcasts to be favorable to them as they own CTV. Bell has tried a bunch of shit over the last couple of years, and people, government, and even bureaucracy has had enough. Give it a few more years and I see Bell, Rogers, and so on being broken up due to monopoly positions in the market place.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  3. Opt-Out vs USA by MikeOnBike · · Score: 2

    The US could use a lot more opt-in. Getting real tired of the level of opt-out.

  4. Tampering! by Fuseboy · · Score: 1

    Besides the privacy concerns, I don't want my ISP monkeying with the HTML I'm getting from web pages ever - not to 'improve my experience'. I already had to talk to them to get them to stop injecting bandwidth-usage messages into my web browsing. Fortunately, https kills that dead.

    Secondly, it's gross when a massive telco starts injecting their own ads on top of web site ads, especially if it's a small, ad-supported website.

    Both of these, IMO, are tampering with private communications.

    1. Re:Tampering! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well, if they change the content, then it is communication tampering, and that is a criminal offense almost anywhere in the world.

  5. It's ads or nothing ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... just like TV.

    To understand how the Internet really works, all we have to do is examine the TV revenue model.

    The carriers are supported by subscriber fees and advertisers. The only part the consumer plays is to purchase the necessary hardware.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    1. Re:It's ads or nothing ... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      This does not apply to cable companies, which have substantial from cable subscribes, or to countries with television taxes. The UK calls their television tax a "license fee", but it's a tax.

  6. Re:Bell Now Determines to Comply by MachDelta · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yep. Chase the links and you'll find this tidbit:

    Bell Canada says it is reversing its policy on tracking the Internet browsing habits of cellphone customers in response to a report from the country’s privacy watchdog that chastised the company’s “opt-out” approach.

    From: www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/privacy-watchdog-urges-bell-to-change-web-tracking-policy/article23822585/

  7. Opt-Out At University by wisnoskij · · Score: 2

    No idea how it works anywhere else but at Waterloo University, On, Canada. There are about a dozen $20 optional donations that automatically go to a number of campus organizations at enrollment. Of course you can opt-out of these donations being traveling to these distant and fragmented organizations and filling out the appropriate forms.

    --
    Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
  8. Whenever I deal with Bell I feel slimy by dixonpete · · Score: 2

    Every 5 years or so I forget how bad my experiences with Bell Canada have been and I buy a service from them. Invariably within a month or two I'm horribly disappointed. Incompetence, poor ethics and deceptive pricing. Then I bounce into the arms of small local providers and I relearn what good service is all about.

    I don't know what went wrong with Bell. Some kind of institutionalized bad karma or something, but they have to be the worst large corporation to deal with in Canada.

    1. Re:Whenever I deal with Bell I feel slimy by kcwhitta · · Score: 1

      Yeah, they beat Rogers out by a hair.

  9. Not enough by phorm · · Score: 2

    The thing is, corporations shouldn't be allowed to run afoul of the law and screw their customers over, only to say "oops, we'll fix that" when they're finally called to task. That encourages them to screw us over this with no penalties other than to cease, but the damage is already done.

    How about Bell cuts a nice big cheque back to any customers affected by this, AND stops.

  10. Governments and privacy by kcwhitta · · Score: 1

    The Canadian government violates Canadian privacy laws. It's actually impressive we still have a privacy commissioner.

    1. Re:Governments and privacy by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Well with these fiscal fuckups, we won;t be able to afford one much longer. At that all we'll be able to afford is spying on the citizens, bombing brown non-christian people and helping the oil companies who are going to need a huge bailout with the price of oil.
      But never fear, these guys are the fiscally responsible crew who love to spend money on getting re-elected, whether tax breaks for the rich or 10's of millions of our hard earned dollars spent to tell us how wonderful they are.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  11. Im not actually surprised by this... by hacksmash001 · · Score: 1

    Bell Canada has lost its way some time ago. It started with the idea of a 'vertically integrated market' ( https://openmedia.ca/blog/fina... ) , then it got a spanking from the CRTC about download exemptions (see http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2... ) quickly followed by not being allowed to keep the plan in place during the trial ( http://www.theglobeandmail.com... ). Slip in a CRTC decision to unbundle TV channels, aka “pick-and-pay”, and Bell Media President puts his foot in it, by 'Meddling' in News Coverage ( http://www.theglobeandmail.com... ). Now it's a 'Privacy' problem for all those vertically integrated customers. Draw your own conclusions about who is to blame, but my money is on an entirely clueless Management Team.