Oh, those privacy whiners. Don’t they know that entire neighborhoods of the Online Marketing village are built on Internet behaviors – subject preferences, web browsing habits, search requests? Don’t they realize that behind-the-screen behavioral targeting is for their own benefit, to save them time and match them up with the most relevant products, services and information on the web? To better serve them?

Privacy Is In the Eye of Beholder
Ask the Electronic Privacy Information Center – EPIC – who told the European Parliament that movement toward the IPv6 model means that user IP addresses will be more personally identifiable than ever. Or ask the European Union, which considers an IP address personal data when it can be used for any personal identification. You can even ask the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, though it says it’s not sure if IP address, harvested by search engines and ad-serving tech for local/geo-targeting, are really personal and subject to privacy rules.

FTC uncertainty suits Google’s take on IP addresses (depends on context), especially when Google argued before the European Commission that its acquisition of giant database/ad serving network, DoubleClick, would not jeopardize user privacy. (The EU just gave its blessing to Google’s $3-pt-1 Billion buyout of DoubleClick; an approval based only on the purchase not violating anti-monopoly rules. The EU said other search engines with ad serving capabilities exist in competition with Google.) On the fifth hand here, one of those competing search engines, Microsoft, answered “both.” First, Microsoft’s European Internet policy director backed Google on the DoubleClick buy-out, stressing the need to ensure consumer consent, transparency and security. Second, after the EU approved, Microsoft said it hoped regulators somewhere blocked the purchase – or at least attached speed bumps – to slow down Google’s behemoth status in online advertising and search.

While updating Google’s, Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s policies for search marketing courseware, I found murky FAQ Privacy statements on Google AdWords. For instance, to apply audience targeting by demographics (age, sex, lifestyle, income) when setting up Google AdWords pay-per-click ads, Google states it works with third parties to offer demographic targeting data to its advertisers. The Big G’s privacy note is: Google user data “is never used.” That italic and quote mark emphasis is mine. (It was educational, not marketing. And it didn’t seem to square with Google’s vaunted tracking and algorithm prowess. But, who knows?)

Let’s Look at Unusual Suspects
Ignore corporate statements on privacy from those who stand to gain ad profits or have a financial interest in the issue; they’re not as interesting as PO’d Facebook users or someone who caught RIAA, Recording Industry Association of America — who protests mightily about defending copyrighted music from download pirates – on a very bad note.

Facebook social networking site got egg on its face last December, when it launched its Beacon advertising platform as a way “to help people share information with friends about things they do on the web” (to better serve users), according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Oh, it also helped “monetize Facebook’s assets” by opening a revenue stream for advertisers who could track and place advertising alongside comments of Facebook users on their products.

Problem: (1) Facebook didn’t ask users if they wanted to opt-in to public listing of their every action online; (2) There were embarrassing false ID tidbits delivered to personal Facebook groups (One was the strappy heels purchased by a young working guy whose mother used his computer to do footwear shopping; he lived with his folks.). (3) The final straw was a security company’s report that Facebook had tracked users on affiliate sites, even if the user opted-out and was not logged into Facebook during the action. Big-Bro-Watches-in-Stealth.

Singing Off-Key
Recording Industry Association of America – RIAA – has aggressively fought what it calls download and peer-to-peer music piracy since the early 1990s. Claiming the high ground in protecting creative product (the music) and the law (copyright), RIAA went on a litigation rampage the past five years, filing thousands of lawsuits against children, grannies, a mother who used a lyric on baby’s birthday invite and, certainly, a large number of college students.

Some targets suggested changing the R for Recording to Racketeering: RIAA seemed to count on being a nuisance suit which “intellectual property thieves” wanted to get rid of ASAP … paying off only a couple thousand dollars, rather than 100s of 1,000s claimed on scary legal papers. The sheer number of threatened lawsuits (over 20,000 since late 2003) and pushing the served into quick out-of-court settlements suggested extortion. (Tony Soprano-style.) With alleged violations of copyright law, the few who tried to fight it usually lost.

Till they met Ms. Anderson. She had been served papers demanding 100s of 1,000s; but her claims were dismissed. So Ms. Anderson documented charges of RIAA’s illegal invasion of privacy, not copyright, and countersued. Anderson charges RIAA and its investigators, MediaSentry, with investigations conducted by unlicensed, unregistered and uncertified private investigators; plus charging investigators with unlawful entry to the hard drives of thousands of Americans to fish for pirated music. Such broad-net personal invasion is a crime in most states, who also demand that evidence collected for litigation must be conducted by licensed investigators. Word is that RIIA is a little “nervous” about this. Anderson’s suit folds in “extortion” claims vs. RIAA and may be heading for Class Action status.

Last Private Word
Let’s give the last of many words on Internet Privacy to Ari Schwartz, Center for Democracy and Technology on Google’s new ability to merge the extensive, personalized DoubleClick database with its own tracking on user search histories and URLs visited … on and off Google. Tweaking the mission statement of Google founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page, To collect the world’s information and To do no evil, Schartz says:
“Certainly, privacy is a major issue for Google. If they want to collect the world’s information, they need to have some sense of what they are going to do with privacy, and it seems the rules are getting made up as we go along instead of having a broad provision,” Schwartz said. “We expected a bit more from Google at this point.”
The simple reality is that all Internet-based endeavors have to be monetized and, without a business model that provides targeted advertising revenues, most major Internet endeavors would not exist. Maybe it’s the cranky ACLU part of me, but I want to know: Is it a cookbook? Remember that old Twilight Zone, when the extraterrestrials pilot their space ship to 1950s Earth (bad Expedia!). The aliens win over Earthlings with their manifesto “To Better Serve Mankind” and convince millions to hitch a space ship ride to Nirvana. Our hero is just stepping into the ship when his Gal Friday reporter friend, who has decrypted the alien document yells up: “Noooo. Don’t go. To Better Serve Mankind is a COOKBOOK!” … groan