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PRIVACY Forum Archive Document
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PRIVACY Forum Digest Tuesday, 15 February 2000 Volume 09 : Issue 08
(http://www.vortex.com/privacy/priv.09.08)
Moderated by Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com)
Vortex Technology, Woodland Hills, CA, U.S.A.
http://www.vortex.com
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CONTENTS
The Damage Control Follies!
(Lauren Weinstein; PRIVACY Forum Moderator)
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The Internet PRIVACY Forum is a moderated digest for the discussion and
analysis of issues relating to the general topic of privacy (both personal
and collective) in the "information age" of the 1990's and beyond. The
moderator will choose submissions for inclusion based on their relevance and
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VOLUME 09, ISSUE 08
Quote for the day:
"This isn't a real estate deal!"
-- Mr. Applegate (Ray Walston)
"Damn Yankees" (Warner Bros.; 1958)
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Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 10:01 PST
From: lauren@vortex.com (Lauren Weinstein; PRIVACY Forum Moderator)
Subject: The Damage Control Follies!
Greetings. Step right up ladies and gentlemen, and see for yourselves one of
the irritating ironies of the information era! More convoluted than Sammy
the Snake Boy! More confusing than Pat the half-man, half-woman! Your head
will spin faster than after a ride on the Lightning Coaster! Come and see:
The Damage Control Follies!
It hasn't been a good couple of weeks for many of the firms that we've taken
to task here in the PRIVACY Forum in the past. Concerns over DoubleClick,
Inc.'s practices have triggered organized protests in various quarters, and
related filings with the Federal Trade Commission attempting to force
further action. A proposed federal law would reportedly make Web cookies
illegal for some purposes unless affirmative permission were first granted
by the Web site visitor. Reports that some high-profile medical information
Web sites have been "leaking" personal information to outside parties, in
contradiction to their stated privacy policies, have fostered a new round of
skepticism about such operations. Major sites have suffered thefts of
sensitive personal customer information. And this is just a very partial
list!
To top it all off, the recent spate of "denial of service" (DoS) attacks on
major Web sites has underscored the fragility of some aspects of the
Internet infrastructure. Two current "People For Internet Responsibility"
statements about these attacks and reactions to them are at:
http://www.pfir.org/statements/02.09.00
and:
http://www.pfir.org/statements/02.12.00
Many firms have together spent untold millions (billions?) of dollars on
advertising and other efforts, attempting to train consumers into a
sufficiently relaxed "comfort level" so that they'll come to depend upon the
Internet, trust the sites, and happily part with their dollars (and in
some cases, with their personal information as well).
While many of these efforts have been made in good faith, others should be
subject to considerable scrutiny. It seemed inevitable that as recent
events have unfolded we'd see the public relations engines shift into
high gear in an attempt to minimize the potential damage.
Don't be fooled though--in most cases, this all appears to amount to little
more than window dressing, with the underlying business practices continuing
essentially unchanged. It's obvious that a main goal of these efforts is
not really to alter the ways in which Web visitors are handled, but rather
to try stave off the many legislative efforts which are appearing at both
state and federal levels. Such legislation threatens to undermine the wild
and woolly self-regulatory lifestyle that has dominated the e-commerce
landscape to this point.
One popular tactic seems to be the establishment of special company-operated
"privacy" Web pages to provide additional information to try comfort
potential customers, much in the manner of the traditional "cookies are your
friends" information pages which are a staple at many sites. DoubleClick has
taken this one better, establishing a seemingly completely separate Web site
(http://www.privacychoices.org) to try popularize their party line that so
long as you have some way to "opt-out" of their profiling and tracking,
there's nothing to worry about... For more on the DoubleClick controversy,
please see:
http://www.vortex.com/privacy/priv.09.06
What's missing from most of these public relations blitzes, of course, is any
fundamental change in the business practices that so many Web users find
intrusive and offensive, and that have triggered the legislative and other
actions. It seems as if many of these firms feel that if they throw around
the word "privacy" enough on their pages and in their new Web site domain
names, consumers will be satisfied and won't notice that basically little
(if anything) has really changed in terms of the actual operations.
We continue to hear the same excuses and explanations that we've heard all
along. DoubleClick, for example, continues to expound its own statistics
that most people don't mind profiling and really like to get the
personalized ads that result. But if people love this stuff so much, why
not avoid all of this controversy and switch to an "opt-in" model, where Web
visitors explicitly sign-up for such data collection, profiling, and ads?
Why should everyone be "enrolled" by default and have it be their
responsibility to figure out how to "opt-out" of these programs, amongst all
the glitz and graphics of so many e-commerce sites. People have other things
to do when they visit sites--most persons have just assumed (incorrectly, as
we've seen) that they don't have to take special actions to protect
themselves from such information gathering, tracking, and profiling
systems.
If people really were as enamored of these systems as the companies claim,
there'd be no problem at all getting plenty of sign-ups in an opt-in
environment. The fact that these firms still generally insist on opt-out
models provides the real insight, public relations efforts notwithstanding.
So, ladies and gentlemen, step into the tent and enjoy The Damage Control
Follies for all that they're worth! With apologies to 1977's
"Hardware Wars": "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss your personal
information goodbye! Get in line now!"
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Co-Founder, PFIR: People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
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End of PRIVACY Forum Digest 09.08
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