Cross-Device Tracking Creates New Level of Privacy Concerns, FTC Says

A Federal Trade Commission workshop that tackled privacy amid tracking consumers across devices suggested that regulators are struggling to keep up with emerging marketing tech.

"While tracking itself is not new, the ways in which data is collected, compiled stored and analyzed certainly is," FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said at the workshop, which gathered usual suspects such as technologists, ad industry trade group representatives and privacy wonks. Consumers are no longer only monitored and followed as they surf the web on desktop computers. Now opening a mobile app, watching TV via a set-top box, browsing the internet and even standing near a digital sign in an airport can all create data streams. Companies, some of them software firms helping marketers better track and understand their consumers, are gathering increasing volumes of online and offline data at greater rates than ever with the ultimate goal of linking it back to individual consumers.

"They do this under the veil of anonymous identifiers and hashed P.I.I. [personally-identifiable information], but these identifiers are still persistent and can provide a strong link to the same individual online and offline," Chairwoman Ramirez said, in language that challenges the typical rhetoric from companies that track consumers.