Ad Tech

On September 27 and 28, 2021, the Swedish Data Protection Forum (Forum för Dataskydd) hosted the 2021 edition of the Nordic Privacy Arena (“Operationalising Data Privacy – Challenges, best practices, and success stories”) in Stockholm, Sweden. This hybrid event brought together privacy practitioners, watchdogs, and academics to debate some of the most pressing issues regarding […]

We’re talking to FPF senior policy experts about their work on important privacy issues. Today, Christy Harris, CIPP/US, Director of Technology and Privacy Research, is sharing her perspective on ad tech and privacy. Prior to joining the FPF team, Christy spent almost 20 years at AOL, where she helped navigate novel consumer privacy issues in […]

Law and legislation take the lead in setting standards for protecting personal data, but the policies and norms established by companies also play a central role. This has been the case particularly for global platforms providing the services used by billions in the course of daily life. Apple’s 2020 Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) previewed a […]

This guest post is by Lokke Moerel, a Professor of Global ICT Law at Tilburg University and Senior of Counsel at Morrison & Foerster in Berlin, and Christine Lyon, partner at Morrison & Foerster in Palo Alto, California. To learn more about FPF in Europe, please visit https://fpf.org/eu. By Lokke Moerel and Christine Lyon[1] Friend and […]

How is location data generated from mobile devices, who gets access to it, and how? As debates over companies and public health authorities using device data to address the current global pandemic continue, it is more important than ever for policymakers and regulators to understand the practical basics of how mobile operating systems work, how […]

By Christy Harris and Charlotte Kress Over the past year, the online advertising (“ad tech”) industry has grappled with the practical challenges of complying with the new California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Once the new law — the first of its kind in the United States — goes into effect on January 1, 2020, businesses […]

Almost everyone has had a similar experience: visiting a website to shop for a product and then having an advertisement for that product “follow” them around the internet. Most free content today, from social media to news, is funded by ads. In order to deliver those ads and measure their effectiveness, companies today rely heavily […]

This morning, Facebook announced that they will begin rolling out new requirements for its “Custom Audiences” targeting tool for advertisers. These updates are a useful step towards creating better user understanding of data flows both on Facebook and in the broader web, and enhancing the accountability of advertisers who use custom marketing lists.

In the world of consumer privacy, including the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile data, and advertising technologies (“Ad Tech”), it can often be difficult to measure real-world impact and conceptualize individual harms and benefits. Fortunately, academic researchers are increasingly focusing on these issues, leading to impressive scholarship from institutions such as the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science, UC Berkeley School of Information, and many others, including non-profits and think tanks.

Researchers at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) have demonstrated that many websites are using third-party tools to track visitors’ individual browsing sessions. “Session replay scripts” can raise serious privacy concerns if implemented incorrectly — but with the right safeguards, can be part of a range of ordinary, useful web analytics tools. FPF has published a 3-page guide for Privacy Professionals to assist in deciding whether and how to implement session replay scripts.