Privacy rights watchdogs and consumer advocates want the Federal government to ban "profiling" of Internet customers, just as the Federal Trade Commission is to begin hearings on the practice.
Various representatives of the groups tell CNET the practice - involving companies gathering data from individuals in order to target them for Internet advertising - creates privacy risks.
CNET says they warn that such mergers as the billion-dollar DoubleClick/Abacus Direct deal raise the surety of corporate abuse of customer data. DoubleClick is an online ad network; Abacus an offline market researcher. This deal could mean merged online profiles from some 850 million Net ads a day and two billion customer catalog transaction histories.
DoubleClick says it doesn't collect "personally identifiable" consumer information, though many members of its advertising network, CNET says, are e-commerce sites gathering "sensitive details" from consumers. And at RightPoint, an online profiling firm, vice president for marketing Kevin Faulkner tells CNET the biggest privacy problem facing the industry is potential confidential information sharing without consumer consent.
"The more my insurer and my bank know about me, the better they can service me," he says. "But I don't want them to share that information with each other."
Privacy groups have pushed for new legal protection for all computer users. The Clinton Administration officially favors industry self-regulation. CNET says, though, that recourse for violating voluntary principles "usually involves losing an industry privacy seal or, at worst, being turned over to the FTC."
And the FTC has argued already that no new laws are needed - yet. "The implementation of fair information practices is not widespread among commercial Web sites," says an FTC privacy report sent to Congress in July, but added online privacy legislation "is not appropriate at this time."
But that's not good enough for some privacy groups, CNET says. "The idea of self-regulation was always implausible," argues Junkbusters President Jason Catlett, "and has been allowed to fail in practice far too often in recent years."
