Privacy Advocate Says Free Internet Will Survive with Do Not Track
By Karla Robinson
September 26, 2012
September 26, 2012
- Free Internet advocates and privacy protectors hail Do Not Track, while advertisers claim it will destroy the Internet as all content is supposedly funded through tracking-based ads.
- “But according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the online advertising industry had revenue of $31.7 billion in 2011, and only about 15 percent of that, $4.9 billion, came from online behavioral advertising (OBA), ads that target consumers through personal information-powered tracking techniques and that are causing the privacy controversy,” writes attorney and privacy advocate Sarah A. Downey for TechCrunch.
- Do Not Track is even less influential when you consider not all Internet users enable the tool; websites have no obligation to respond to a Do Not Track signal and most ignore it; Do Not Track doesn’t mean advertisers aren’t collecting and selling your data — they’re just not targeting you with ads; and finally, 80 percent of the money advertising makes from targeted advertising goes to improving targeted ads, NOT to content providers.
- As the ad revenue increased 530 percent since 2002, people have become increasingly concerned about tracking, with 68 percent saying they’re not okay with tracking-based targeted ads and another 71 percent saying they’re very concerned about their information being sold or shared without their permission.
- “We repeatedly hear that users want to understand what data is being collected, by whom, and how these companies might ultimately use it,” explains Downey. “These questions are the real unknowns that consumers care about and that advertising companies can’t answer. What is all this data they’re collecting, and where is it all going?”
- Downey suggests that most advertising “doesn’t pose any privacy threat because it’s contextual, meaning it’s based on where the ad is placed, not on who sees the ad,” and recommends starting a dialogue on the issue.
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