The FT brings up two clear points in an editorial titled Protecting Privacy 1. that data be anonymized and 2. that users give informed consent to be tracked, and their challenge to the advertising industry is to “be more open about their activities.”
There has been and will continue to be lots of debate about how rules and industry standards should evolve when it comes to tracking your digital life, but these have largely occurred without the participation of the public who one might conclude, see little action or consequence emerging from all the talk (unless your iPhone now showing arrows when your location is being shared qualifies as action).
Government and industry are both internally conflicted when it comes to online privacy protection. If left completely to their own devices, they will tend to make many mistakes (as well as to get some things right of course). How can we avoid many of these mistakes? Simple: users need to be involved in determining the appropriate boundaries for their online privacy.
Bringing users into the problem-solving and solutions building process is one key reason Abine acquired TACO recently. TACO is precisely the kind of thing that the advertising industry could have done right, but got wrong (likely on purpose). So users had to do it themselves. Now, the Network Advertising Initiative is playing catch-up.
At Abine, we believe users care very much about their online privacy, but need simple tools with clear options to empower them to further define what they want to share, when, with who, and for how long. This is the dialog we are engaging our community in every day. And from this, rather than from more debates on the Hill, will emerge better solutions for every Internet user.
If you haven’t already, download the Abine Privacy Suite (it’s free), and join a community leading the way to better online privacy through action.