Have you ever clicked the I agree to the Terms and Conditions on a page and not actually read them? If you did you probably wouldn’t click the I agree. Permission to track you and sell your information is hiding everywhere on the web, not just in the I Terms and Conditions. Sick of emptying your spam folder? If nothing changes it is onl going to get worse.
However according to an article on The New York Times’ website the stage has been set for thing to change. Advocates to increase internet privacy are pushing for a “do not track” feature that will allow users to “tell Web sites to stop surreptitiously tracking their online habits and collecting clues about age, salary, health, location and leisure activities.” This feature would be similar to the “do not call” lists for telemarketers.
This has lead to a lot of debate in Washington as to how strict to privacy policies should be. Currently two groups, the Federal Trade Commission and the Commerce Department, are set to release their reports on this.
According to the article consumer advocates are worried that the policy makers will neglected to take into consideration the interest of the people who will be “most effected by the privacy laws.”
Well of course they are worried. Half of their market could easily elected out of being spammed by them, profits would drop because they can’t sell the information they have collected on you. To me that sounds great, actually.
The people who use this information to target their audience thinks that targeted ads are helpful, as is ad competition. Well of course they would think that. It’s where they can reach people who are more likely to be their consumers.
On the other side, the article states that the White house wants to create a panel to look at how to protect us, the consumers, while also making U.S. companies a stronger competition on an international level. They also want to make sure that no restrictions will interfere with law enforcement or national security efforts.
The results of these discussions could potentially rely on which agency and which political party is able to lead the debate.
There is also a concern in the Obama administration that we should be worried about the prospect of stricter standers for privacy internationally.
Europe just increased it’s privacy regulations recently and increased the regulations especially for targeting ads on social networking sites.
No comments:
Post a Comment