International Law

FTC wants more control over interactive ads

Image via Wikipedia

"Since the 1990's, the Federal Trade Commission and its staff have engaged in investigations, law enforcement, studies, and other policy developments to protect consumer privacy in the online environment.

The FTC's work in this area is part of its broader, longstanding program to address privacy concerns in both the online and offline markets.

In the online environment, innovation in consumer services and products - photo-sharing, blogging, the creation of virtual communities, and robust search, to name but a few - has significantly enhanced consumers' use of the Web.

The FTC's privacy program seeks to balance support for such innovation with the need to protect against harms to consumers' privacy."

The FTC has identified 5 areas of concern, which it seeks to address in their policy making role as a regulator preventing deceptive advertising.

The five areas of concern are:

1) the disclosure of consumer friendly privacy policies;

2) security of the data collected, including the length of time the data is stored;

3) how businesses can change their privacy policies;

4) restrictions on track sensitive data, which would allow specific individuals to be targetted by advertisers;

5) using or selling the data collected for anything other than behavioral advertising.

John Arden, writing at Trade Regulation talk, has a good summary of the FTC proposals and includes some interesting comments made by the Commissioners.

If you want to read or make a comment on the FTC's proposed polices, you have until February 22nd, 2009.  

"Comments should be sent by Friday, February 22, 2008, to: Secretary, Federal Trade Commission, Room H-135 (Annex N), 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington,  D.C. 20580, or BehavioralMarketingPrinciples@ftc.gov.

The comments will be posted on the FTC's behavioral advertising web page for possible use in the development of selfregulatory programs."

Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on February 16, 2009 (boomark / email).