FTC Proposes Privacy Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
Behavioral advertising, which can be understood as the tracking of a consumer’s activities on line in order to deliver advertising targeted to the consumer’s specific interest, is a significant growth area. More and more companies are adopting some form of behavioral advertising into their marketing programs.
Behavioral advertising has, however, also raised important privacy concerns. As a result, at the end of 2007, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) released a set of proposed principles to guide the development of self regulation in the area of online behavioral advertising. These guidelines were released after the FTC hosted a town hall meting focused specifically on behavioral advertising.
The principles proposed by the FTC are as set forth below:
- Every website 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.
- Any company that collects or stores consumer data for behavioral advertising should provide reasonable security for the data and should retain data only as necessary to fulfill a legitimate business or law enforcement need.
- Companies should obtain affirmative express consent from affected consumers before using data in any manner materially different from promises the company made when it collected the data.
- Companies should only collect sensitive data for behavioral advertising if they obtain affirmative express consent from the consumer to receive such advertising.
Additional information is available on the FTC web site. Also see the FTC Report on Behavioral Advertising, Moving the Discussion Forward to Possible Self-Regulatory Principles.
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Jacqueline Klosek, Senior Counsel in the Business Law Department of Goodwin Procter LLP, is a frequent author and commentator on data privacy and security. You can email her at jacquelineklosek@gmail.com -
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