Online advertising networks are tracking consumers’ online activity to market to them with highly-targeted ads. This process, known as “behavioral advertising,” is raising questions about privacy and consumers’ control over their own information, according to the Mid-American Communications Alliance (MCA), which hosted a panel of national privacy experts at the University of Oklahoma on December 2, 2008.
The luncheon was hosted as privacy issues have been increasingly elevated at the national level, according to Todd Abrajano, executive director of MCA. In September 2008, the U.S. Senate held hearings on behavioral advertising, and in November the Washington Post reported, “President-elect Barack Obama has cited privacy as one of the technology issues his administration would address, setting the stage for a debate over standards for online publishers and advertisers.”
“Our goal for the event was to examine the issues surrounding online privacy and to explore consumer-friendly policies that provide greater transparency and more individual control of personal information,” said Abrajano.
“The protection of consumers’ personal information should be paramount,” said Abrajano. While some consumers are comfortable with websites requiring certain information to conduct business transactions or make their online experience more rewarding, a majority of consumers are not as willing to let companies monitor their e-mail or keep track of what websites they visit in order to target them with advertising.”
Consumers said as much in two studies released in 2008, one published by Consumer Reports and the other conducted by TRUSTe .
With an introduction by Andrew Coats, Dean of the OU College of Law, panelists included Christopher Wolf, co-founder of the Future of Privacy Forum and chair of the Privacy and Data Security Practice Group for Proskauer Rose LLP; Fred Ramos, owner of information security company RGF Inc. and former executive director of the State Hispanic Chamber of Oklahoma; and Keith Epstein, Associate General Counsel for AT&T.
