FTC Staff Proposes Online Behavioral Advertising Privacy Principles

FTC STAFF PROPOSES ONLINE BEHAVIORAL ADVERTISING PRIVACY PRINCIPLES
[SOURCE: Federal Trade Commission press release]
To address important consumer privacy concerns associated with online behavioral advertising, the staff of the Federal Trade Commission today released a set of proposed principles to guide the development of self-regulation in this evolving area. Behavioral advertising is the tracking of a consumer’s activities online ­ including the searches the consumer has conducted, the Web pages visited, and the content viewed ­ in order to deliver advertising targeted to the individual consumer’s interests. To address the need for greater transparency and consumer control regarding privacy issues raised by behavioral advertising, the FTC staff proposes: Every Web site where data is collected for behavioral advertising should provide a clear, consumer-friendly, and prominent statement that data is being collected to provide ads targeted to the consumer and give consumers the ability to choose whether or not to have their information collected for such purpose.
To address the concern that data collected for behavioral advertising may find its way into the hands of criminals or other wrongdoers, and concerns about the length of time companies are retaining consumer data, the FTC staff proposes:
Any company that collects or stores consumer data for behavioral advertising should provide reasonable security for that data and should retain data only as long as is necessary to fulfill a legitimate business or law enforcement need.
To address the concern that companies may not keep their privacy promises when they change their privacy policies, FTC staff proposes:
Companies should obtain affirmative express consent from affected consumers before using data in a manner materially different from promises the company made when it collected the data.
To address the concern that sensitive data ­ medical information or children’s activities online, for example ­ may be used in behavioral advertising, FTC staff proposes:
Companies should only collect sensitive data for behavioral advertising if they obtain affirmative express consent from the consumer to receive such advertising.
FTC staff also seeks comment on what constitutes “sensitive data” and whether the use of sensitive data should be prohibited, rather than subject to consumer choice.
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/12/principles.shtm

* F.T.C. Approves DoubleClick Deal
In tandem with the announcement, the agency released voluntary privacy guidelines for companies like Google that are in the business of aiming ads at people based on their actions on the Web. The gist of the guidelines was that the entire advertising industry should work together to give consumers more choice about whether they want to be tracked.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/business/21adco.html?ref=todayspaper

* FTC offers guidelines for tracking online users, targeting ads
http://www.siliconvalley.com/latestheadlines/ci_7771115