Addressing the privacy issues related to advertising technology and online tracking has been a key focus since FPF’s founding. Increasingly, the mobile advertising space, geo-location tracking, and indoor positioning technologies are at the forefront of online data management, retail, and new consumer offerings. Thus, it is not surprising that regulators, industry leaders, and advocates are taking a hard look at questions about how to appropriately collect and handle consumer data for advertising, location-based targeting, and audience measurement. Additionally, as public awareness of targeted and personalized advertising grows, organizations are pushed to deliver more helpful, relevant ads by less intrusive means. FPF curates a gallery of leading practices, provides up-to-date analysis of emerging and evolving technologies, convenes stakeholders in a monthly working group call, and works with policymakers, advocates, and other stakeholders to support leading privacy practices for the use of location data.
FPF Announces Four New Advisory Board Members
We are pleased to announce today four new Future of Privacy Forum advisory board members and supporters. We look forward to their guidance. Ontario Privacy Commissioner Dr. Ann Cavoukian is recognized as one of the leading privacy experts in the world. An avowed believer in the role that technology can play in protecting privacy, Dr. […]
Future of Privacy Forum Unveils New Privacy and Personalization Symbols Finalists
Today Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) released two proposed icons designed to communicate to web users about the efforts of advertisers to tailor ads based on the websites they visit. In February 2009, the Federal Trade Commission expressed concern that privacy policies were not being read or understood, and urged the industry to develop new […]
Communicating Online Advertising Practices to Consumers
Nymity, a global privacy and data protection research services firm and FPF supporter, just published an interview with Jules which provides a nice overview of our activities. You can sign up for Nymity’s free newsletter at www.nymity.com.
Cookie Opt-in, Opt-out? How about stepping up?
EU companies are heaving sighs of relief after obtaining some text changes in the EU telecoms package passed this week in Brussels. Concerns that the proposed amendments to the ePrivacy Directive would have required cookies used for secondary purposes to be “opt-in” had trade groups scrambling, but elimination of the words “prior” and “after having […]
You Say It's Your Birthday
One year ago today, FPF opened its doors and promised to work to advance responsible data practices. Our goal was to work with progressive companies, advocates, academics and government leaders to find common ground on solutions that ensured that uses of consumer information provided users with transparency and control. While FPF has grown in terms […]
FPF Advisory Board Member Lorrie Cranor Submits CUPS Reports to FTC
FPF Advisory Board member Lorrie Cranor, Director of CUPS (CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Lab) at Carnegie Mellon University informs us that the Lab has issued two new technical reports and submitted them as public comments to the FTC’s exploring privacy roundtable series. Here are the abstracts, but the full studies are definitely worth reading! […]
Advertising Privacy
Almost every time we go online, using our computers or mobile devices, each of us produces data in some form. This data may contain only oblique information about who we are and what we are doing, but when enough of it is aggregated, facts about us which we believed were private has the potential to […]
Privacy's Zietgeist Moment
This second guest post from FPF Advisory Board member Professor Danielle Citron is cross-posted with Concurringopinions.com, one of the top legal blogs. Check out Concurringopinions.com for regular legal and policy from top privacy scholars, including among others FPF Advisory Board members Daniel Solove, Frank Pasquale and Danielle Citron. Privacy’s Zietgeist Moment By Danielle Citron Privacy […]
FTC Commissioner Thomas Rosch Reflections on Behavioral Advertising
In his speech to the US Chamber of Commerce, FTC Commissioner Thomas Rosch provides an interesting analysis of the Commission’s legal authority in the area of online behavioral advertising. He calls non-personal behavioral tracking a “vexing” policy issue, but suggests that there are ” some hard legal issues that need to be resolved even if […]
Understanding Will Breed Trust…
Consumers need to understand more about what is being done online. The understanding will breed trust, and the trust will breed a more viable advertising solution. We agree with Jeff Hirsch, CEO of AudienceScience. But talk is cheap. Will industry really seek to deliver on user trust? We hope so but we also think that […]