Corporation data collection conversation

Questions are bolded, responses are prepended with the name of the respondant, comments are italicized.

Moderated by Laura Brandimarte. Panelists: Richard Kosinski (sorry, only link is to LinkedIn), Deirdre Mulligan, Ashkan Soltani

 

How has data use evolved as the internet has emerged?

Kosinski: Data available with the rise of the internet drove new businesses.

Soltani: Data is like radiation.

Comments

• Data as radiation sounds like Maciej Ceglowski's metaphor (also on the privacy group page)

What about data collection by multinational companies, who may be subject to different regulations?

Mulligan: Europe has omnibus protection, with Data Protection Authorities. U.S. does not; it has "piecemeal" laws at the state and federal levels. Most are on data use, but there are some for collection as well. The FCC has new rules limiting data use by companies.

Mulligan: U.S. protections against government access for data stored by companies are stronger than E.U. countries.

Brandimarte: There used to be Safe Harbor allowing U.S. companies to serve customers in E.U., with privacy rights guaranteed.

Comments

• Safe Harbor Privacy Principles are here.
• The FCC rules from Oct 2017 that Mulligan mentions are here.
• "Collection" might be defined in various tortured ways.
• A good resource on U.S. laws and regulations is the book Information Privacy.

What are the privacy issues involved in advertising based on the emotional state of consumers

Kosinski: Mediabricks works to identify the emotional state of the consumer, so that other companies can choose which states the consumer should be in when their ads are served, in mobile apps. E.U. consumers are not served at all, due to privacy regulations.

Mulligan: Manipulation of a consumer by a marketer brings up consumer protection issues broadly. Some populations are vulnerable, and this kind of marketing might be exploitative. The built environment might be "like an experiment" in that exceptional kinds of information might be collected and used to sell. This might be "creepy."

Kosinski: Advertising is self-regulated to avoid being "creepy:" The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) are two agencies. The company "can build anything" but has to "have a conscience."

Comments

• Kosinski works for Mediabricks.

How should we be anonymous online?

Soltani: There is an arms-race between the tracking technologies used companies who profit from targeted advertising and the privacy-enhancing technologies used by privacy-conscious users. Quantcast set supercookies on users who tried to delete their cookies to avoid being tracked. The DAA and the IAB (mentioned above) have incentives to overcome privacy-protections.

Soltani: Consumers now are at an informational disadvantage compared to companies that they engage with when choosing a product. Companies know a lot of things about consumers that consumers themselves do not know to be known. An example is offline enhancement, where offline data is combined with online behavioral data.

Soltani: "Sucker lists" were investigated by the FTC because they are vulnerable. When are consumers made aware that the ads shown by Mediabricks are shown because they are in a particular emotional state (like a "winning" or "rescued" moment)?

Soltani: More broadly, targeted advertising raises a question about what a pen-tester might call "vulnerability analysis:" much like software might be analyzed for vulnerabilities, are humans being targeted for vulnerabilities to sell them things?

Kosinski: The economics of apps given away for free demands targeted advertising. This is done in aggregate; it is never designed to "put someone at risk or in jeopardy."

Comments

• Consumers are susceptible to manipulation due to the information imbalance when ad targeting is not transparent. When people are not aware of why they are being targeted (for example, because you finished your jog and feeling a "winning" moment) they can make an emotional decision to buy. By contrast telling people why they are targeted makes their decision rational, which might block the "impulse buy." Moreover, transparency involves revealing how much is known about the target, which may be "too much" or may be a matter of competitive advantage which an advertiser wishes to keep a secret.