Category: Facebook

Microsoft’s Research into Behavioral Targeting & Profiling via its Beijing Research Lab

There’s a “Great Digital Game” going on, where companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft and leading ad agencies compete to expand the clout of online marketing around the globe.  As I told EU and other privacy regulators last Friday, the Obama Administration is being pressed by US online marketers to forge trade deals that will allow the leading companies to conduct business in the  Asia-Pacific and EU region without worrying about serious privacy and consumer protection rules.  I do think it’s ironic–and really misleading–to point to online marketing as a U.S. economic success story that requires special treatment.  The revenues generated by Google, Facebook and the others are principally from advertising.  Whether they are truly models of innovation that will bring the kind of sustainable long-term job and economic growth we need is questionable.

At the core of the “Great Digital Game”–where U.S. companies strive to dominate the global interactive ad marketplace–is data collection for user targeting.  Microsoft, which has a principal online ad research facility in Beijing, was recently seeking a Senior Data Mining Analyst.  Read this excerpt from the job description and think about privacy, civil liberties in China and other autocratic regimes, consumer protection and the ethical role of U.S. online ad companies:  “Microsoft Ad Platform China is building world-class engineering teams in Beijing, focusing on online Ads related systems and services such as behavior targeting and advertiser analytics. The team partner closely with the Redmond Ad Platform team, enabling the discovery and inference of user profiles, intent and interaction while respecting privacy and trust, with the ultimate goal of maximizing benefits for users, advertisers and publishers…Core Job Responsibilities: Conduct and manage applied research and modeling work in the areas of user segmentation, profiling, and targeting. Research and experiment on data mining algorithms for user segmentation and dynamic segment expansion. Utilize data mining technologies and use various data sources, some of which may include MSN/Windows Live web usage, search query, demographic, subscription, and 3rd party data, to gain insight into Internet user behavior and intent that will set the foundation for Microsoft targeting offerings and data services. Provide complete solutions to business problems using data mining techniques, statistics and data analysis. Serve as subject matter expert and drive thought leadership in the areas of user profiling, ad targeting, and personalization for Microsoft online services.”

Facebook’s new DC Lobbyist: Oops, I mean “Customer Service” Rep!

Are they a lobbyist to reach out to the GOP or a mere “customer service” representative who can help guide powerful  politicians through the Facebook social media marketing maze?  Read this excerpt from Clickz.com and decide for yourself:

Facebook has hired a Republican Party insider to beef up its political outreach team. Former digital strategist at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Katie Harbath…will join the firm’s small Washington, D.C.-based team as associate manager, policy…The company considers the role to be a customer service position, aimed at helping legislators and their staffers, congressional committees and political campaigns make better use of Facebook. Until now, Facebook’s U.S. Politics Page, politics-related media partnerships, and Capitol Hill outreach has been handled primarily by two Facebook public policy execs, Adam Conner Andrew Noyes, the firm’s manager, public policy communications….[and] Twitter also is building out a D.C. staff. In January, Adam Sharp, was set to begin his work as the company’s government and political partnerships manager. He is charged with helping lawmakers, politicians, and government staff take better advantage of the micro-blogging site.

Pepsi Exec Tells What Keeps Facebook’s Zuckerberg “Up at Night”–Guess What it Is [Annals of Social Media Marketing & Privacy]

Shiv Singh is the head of digital marketing for Pepsi’s beverage line-up.  At a recent “Social Media Week” event, he discussed how brands should increase efforts to “listen” to social media conversations.  Mr. Singh said that:
“Twenty-five percent of all time spent online is spent on Facebook.  We only get to see and listen to a small slice of that. That [larger slice] is the missing link. We sometimes overstate the benefits of listening and we don’t acknowledge the fact that we’re not listening to everything as a whole. Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook are brilliant, but if there’s one thing that keeps him awake at night it’s that the default state for profiles is not public.”

No doubt, if privacy advocates and responsible policymakers–and concerned Facebook users–hadn’t objected, the profiles would be public by default.  Given that Facebook’s ad revenues are connected to having such a goldmine of data free to its partners, having profiles be public by default would give us privacy nightmares.

Leading Health, Privacy, and Consumer Groups Call on FTC to Protect Adolescent Privacy online

For Immediate Release:  Feb. 18, 2011
Child, Health and Consumer Advocates Ask FTC for Teen Privacy Protections, including Do-Not-Track and No Behavioral Targeting

Today a Coalition of Child, Health and Consumer Advocates filed comments on the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed privacy framework asking for increased privacy protections for adolescents.   The coalition includes leading advocates such as the Center for Digital Democracy, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Pediatrics, Children Now, and the Consumer Federation of America.

Privacy protections are needed as teens are increasingly subjected to privacy invasions online. Teens are using new media technologies for key social interactions and to explore their identities. This increased use of digital media subjects them to wholesale data collection and profiling of even their most intimate interactions with friends, family, and schools. Meanwhile, recent research in psychology and neuroscience reveals that teens are more prone to risky behavior when their anxieties and peer relations are exploited. Privacy protections are needed to keep the online world social and safe.

Companies should not use data to behaviorally profile teens. The framework should also provide enhanced choice for adolescents, including a Do Not Track feature. In implementing “privacy by design,” companies should consider the needs and vulnerabilities of teens.  They should address those vulnerabilities by, for example, minimizing the amount of data collected from teens.  Data that is collected should be retained for only short periods and should be afforded greater security.

“Teens live online today,” said Guilherme Roschke, attorney for CDD. “This time of development and maturation requires privacy protections. Teens cannot go it alone against the vast data collection and profiling infrastructure of new media technologies that not even adults can understand.”

“Because of their avid use of new media, adolescents are primary targets for digital marketing,” explained co-signer Kathryn C. Montgomery, Ph.D. “The unprecedented ability of digital technologies to track and profile individuals across the media landscape, and to engage in sophisticated forms of targeting, puts these young people at special risk of compromising their privacy.”

The full coalition includes:

Center for Digital Democracy, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Pediatrics, Berkeley Media Studies Group, a project of the Public Health Institute, Children Now, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, David VB Britt, Retired CEO, Sesame Workshop, Ellen Wartella, Kathryn Montgomery, National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity, a project of Public Health Law & Policy, The Praxis Project, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Public Good, Public Health Institute, Tamara R. Piety, and World Privacy Forum

Guilherme Roschke
Staff Attorney / Fellow
Institute for Public Representation
First Amendment and Media Center
Georgetown University Law Center
T:(202) 662-9543
F:(202) 662-9634
gcr22@law.georgetown.edu
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/clinics/ipr/
**********

NTIA’s Strickling on Privacy: He Forgets Consumers!

Here’s an excerpt via Politico from their interview with Department of Commerce NTIA Chief–and potential privacy policy maven–Lawrence Strickling.  Note the absence of consumers in his description of the problem and issues.  The Commerce Department, which is jockeying to have a greater role in the privacy debate (which the largest data collectors like because they are afraid of the consumer watchdog-minded FTC), better start making consumer needs come first–if they are to have any credibility here in the U.S. and with the EU.   It appears from the interview the Commerce Department has largely made up its mind to rely on “voluntary enforceable codes of conduct.”   Here’s what Larry said in a Q & A:

NTIA is also getting into the privacy discussions.

It’s part of the larger Internet Policy Task Force that’s underway here at Commerce where our agency — along with other agencies — is looking at a number of Internet policy issues. Privacy is first and foremost on the list, but we’re also looking at the protection of intellectual property, cybersecurity, and we’ll be looking at the free flow of information. For Commerce, our theme links all these topics around the notion of innovation, preserving the job creation and business expansion aspects of the Internet and trying to protect that going forward. So in the area of privacy, the task force did issue the green paper late last year. Comments just came in on that, so people are starting to work their way through them, with the goal that we’ll take the green paper and turn it into a more final pronouncement of the Department of Commerce or perhaps even the administration’s policy on privacy later this spring.

Do you think there should be a government office specifically dedicated to privacy?

We certainly believe that if we’re going to move forward with these voluntary enforceable codes of conduct with the industry that the function of convening and organizing that process should sit [in the government]. Our believe is that the Department of Commerce, and in particular NTIA, is the appropriate place for that function to reside. When we start talking about offices that sounds more bureaucratic and maybe requires departmental administrative orders. But on the issue of making sure that function is done, yes, based on what we see in the comments, we think that’s an appropriate idea. We think it’s a necessary idea in terms of working with industry and we’ll see how this all plays out over the course of the spring.

What is NTIA doing internationally on the privacy front?

Privacy has big international implications because the Council of Europe is looking at redoing what they’ve done in privacy. The European Union is looking at this issue. OECD is looking at the issue. So we’re very cognizant of the need to make sure our policy, whatever it is, is designed in a way to best harmonize with what’s happening in the rest of the world, and in particularly Europe.

Statement of Jeff Chester on the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force Privacy and E-Commerce: a Bill of Behavioral Targeting “Rights” for Online Marketers?

The Obama Administration asks some important questions about protecting the privacy of U.S. consumers.  But given the growth of online data collection that threatens our privacy, including when consumers are engaged in financial, health, and other personal transactions (including involving their families), this new report offers us a digital déjà vu.   The time for questions has long passed.

Instead of real laws protecting consumers, we are offered a vague “multi-stakeholder” process to help develop “enforceable codes of conduct.”  If the Commerce Department really placed the interests of consumers first, it would have been able to better articulate in the report how the current system threatens privacy.    They should have been able to clearly say what practices are right and wrong—such as the extensive system of online behavioral tracking that stealthily shadows consumers—whether on their personal computer or a mobile phone.   The paper should have firmly articulated what the safeguards should be for financial, health and other sensitive data.  The report should have rejected outright any role for self-regulation, given its failures in the online data collection marketplace.  While the report supports a FIPPS framework, these principles can be written in a way that ultimately endorses existing business practices for online data collection and targeting.

This illustrates one of the basic problems with the Administration’s approach to protecting consumer privacy online.  The Commerce Department is focused on promoting the interests of industry and business—not consumers.  It cannot play the role of an independent, honest broker; consequently it should not be empowered to create a new Privacy Policy Office.   Having the Commerce Department play a role in protecting privacy will enable the data collection foxes to run the consumer privacy henhouse.  We call on the Administration and Congress to address this issue.  A new Privacy Policy Office should be independent and operate under the Administrative Procedures Act—ensuring there are safeguards for meaningful public participation and transparency.

The Commerce paper’s real goal is to help U.S. Internet data collection companies operate in the EU, Asia/Pacific and other markets as “privacy-free” zones.  Under the cover of promoting “innovation” and trade, I fear the U.S. will craft a crazy-quilt code of conduct regimes that they will claim should pass muster in the EU (which has a more comprehensive framework to protect privacy).  The Obama Administration appears to be promoting a kind of “separate, but equal” framework, where it will argue that no matter how weak U.S. privacy rules are, other countries should accept them as the equivalent of a stronger approach.  The new paper should have acknowledged the U.S. has to play catch-up with the EU when it comes to protecting consumer privacy.

We have been promised meetings with the new White House subcommittee on privacy, where consumer and privacy groups will raise these and other concerns.

Five Ways to Protect Privacy

[a version we wrote of this ran in Multichannel News]
Five Ways for Digital Marketers to Protect Consumer Privacy

If George Orwell were writing today, 1984’s Winston Smith would be working as a “Doublespeak” specialist crafting privacy policies and creating self-regulatory regimes.  That’s not what consumers and citizens need in the interactive marketing era.   All Americans should have their privacy respected and protected when they go online—including when they use mobile phones.

1.     Tell your users what you actually say to your advertisers—about how the profiling and targeting process really works.  There is a disconnect that is unfair and deceptive between what companies say in their privacy policies and pitch to their clients and potential partners.   Be honest about the “360 degree” ways you engage in online marketing.

2.     Don’t collect information and target consumers based on their interests in finance and health.  These two most “sensitive” categories should be opt-in only.   When consumers go online for loans, credit, mortgages, and health concerns they require the upmost privacy.  Although online financial, health and so-called lead-generation advertising is big business, consumers should not be forced to have their online financial and health behavior stealthfully-tracked and compiled.  The risks to consumers are great if we don’t develop special rules for this data.

3.     Racial and ethnic profiling data should also be opt-in. Hispanics, African-Americas, Asian-Americans and other minorities are increasingly the focus of a growing behavioral targeting and online marketing apparatus.  In the “offline” world, we have witnessed a disturbing use of racial profiling practices to discriminate against individuals.  In today’s online environment, users are being identified as being a member of a racial or ethnic group without either their awareness or consent.  While we all want to see the growth of diversely owned online publishing, it should not be done at the expense of civil liberties in the digital era.  We must prevent the growth of online racial profiling, that when tied to income, geography and other data can be used to create 21st Century forms of discrimination.

4.     Don’t use neuromarketing and other subliminal and subconscious-based advertising.   Fortune 1000 advertisers and online marketers such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are using new forms of ad testing and development involving the latest tools of neuroscience, such as fMRI’s and EEGs.  Neuromarketing’s goal is to directly influence a consumer’s subconscious, and when combined with the power of online data targeting,  offers powerful—and frightening—new forms of manipulation.

5.     Users need to consent to having their profiles be bought and sold on so-called online ad exchanges.  Selling off the right to target a consumer online, via real-time auctions that happen in milliseconds, is dehumanizing.  Nor should we permit the growing combination of offline and online databases to be used for targeting, including via these new digital auction houses.

Interactive marketing is now a fundamental operating principle for the cross-platform media economy throughout the world.   But right now, it’s a digital “wild west” that doesn’t serve the interests of consumers, citizens and most marketers.

Facebook to TV Business: We can boost your audience: “it’s all about making that data available”

Yesterday, Facebook pitched itself to the global commercial TV industry at MIPCOM.  Facebooks’ EMEA rep Joanna Shields touted how Facebook could help generate more viewers and greater involvement with TV programs, such as “X-Factor.”  Ms. Shields said that Facebook Places location targeting system might let its users “check in” to a program:  “…you could check into a television show and tell everyone what’s happening.  You could say I am watching this and you got to see it… It could become a very powerful marketing tool at some stage…It’s all about data, it’s all about making that data available.”  Other quotes from Ms. Shields: “The voice of your fan can be amplified to a chorus, and a focus group can be the size of a country…30% of all TV viewers have admitted to being logged onto to Facebook while watching a TV show…[TV program] stories are the beginning of the conversation, and not the last word…I can see someday the ability to sign in using your Facebook ID to a show.”

Facebook’s Partnership with Target Stores: Is this leading to its work thwarting a Boycott effort?

As news reports emerge that Facebook is preventing a group boycotting Target Stores for its political positions able to use the social network’s functionality, it’s important to connect its business relationship with the chain store.   Facebook recently made a deal with Target as part of its marketing push for its virtual “Credits” currency.  The growing relationship of the biggest brands and Facebook, and what happens to our information and how these companies get preferred treatment, must be on the policy and advocates agenda. Politico reported that: “As the number of Facebook members signed up for the “Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics” page neared 78,000 in recent days, Facebook personnel locked down portions of the page — banning new discussion threads, preventing members from posting videos and standard Web links to other sites and barring the page’s administrator from sending updates to those who signed up for the boycott.”

Facebook and Target stores are new partners, something which may explain its censorious efforts.  Inside Facebook also recently reported:“Following recent efforts by Zynga, Playdom and other social gaming companies to launch pre-paid cards for virtual goods in stores, Facebook is going direct — starting this Sunday, it will allow users to buy pre-paid cards for its virtual currency, Credits, within 1,743 Target retail locations across the US and on Target.com.

Cards can be purchased in $15, $25 and $50 increments, similar pricing to what you’ll see for a wide variety of other pre-paid game cards already available in Targets and other stores around the country.

Facebook itself is also helping to push the new integration, by including a Target store finder on its official Credits splash page. When users click on the “Redeem Gift Card” in the Facebook Credits gift cards section of the Credits page, they’ll see a popup window asking them to enter the scratch-off number on the back of the Credits card. Clicking “Redeem Now” will add the amount of Credits purchased to their Facebook account.”



Facebook Finagling: Getting You to Push the “Like” Button and Opt-In to Third Party Apps, Marketers, and Data Collection

As Facebook builds a larger online marketing and data collection infrastructure around the world, in the U.S.,  India, and in the EU, it’s important regulators, researchers, privacy and consumer protection advocates investigate how it operates its social media marketing business.  Facebook prefers to keep its interactive “marketing to the social graph” ad approach largely out of public view.  For example, last week, noted Inside Facebook, there was this change [our bold]:

“Open Graph-enabled third-party websites can now include Like buttons that create a connection with a Page, not just share an object. Page Likes can be more valuable because they opt a user into receiving updates about the Page in their news feed, and displaying the connection on their profile. Developers don’t need to include any description of what the Like button actually points to, meaning users may be unaware that their click is in fact subscribing and connecting them. The change will help developers convert one-time visitors into members of their Page’s community.”

This is a good illustration of how Facebook (and others) zeal in promoting third party data and financial relationships threatens to further undermine privacy and related consumer protection concerns.