On December 7, 2009 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took a significant step forward in their exploration of consumer privacy concerns surrounding behavioral advertising techniques by holding the first of three consumer privacy roundtables. The purpose of the meeting was to examine policies and regulatory practices to ensure the information gathered by behavior targeting companies is safe and unobtrusive to users. Today, nearly 3 weeks later, the NAI made a huge step forward in demonstrating that it can be self-regulated by releasing the results from their first annual audit on its member’s privacy and data-handling practices. The NAI is a group of third party network advertisers who are committed to increasing consumer confidence and contributing to the growth of electronic commerce. The results from the audit found that there were “no compliance deficiencies.”
It’s crucial to ensure the overall health of the behavior targeting industry to not only satisfy federal regulators but also address concerns from consumer privacy advocates. Today the NAI helped address concerns from some privacy adovates who feel the industry is a bit of “blackbox” with its data collection practices and monitoring. However, moving forward the NAI should consider the advice put forth by Grant Gross of IDG News Service, when he suggested “the group should consider using a third party to audit compliance of its privacy guidelines, instead of having NAI staff do the audits.”
The behavior targeting industry is still in its infancy and understandably it can be a touchy subject for privacy advocates. Today’s announcement by the NAI and continual industry wide transparency should help put ease many of the concerns.
