Amendments to the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance will
be effective on 1 April 2013. Companies are required to notify
their customers about using their personal data for direct
marketing. Citizens of Hong Kong received notification of this
use from many companies in March. They will be presumed to have
given consent to such if objection is not raised in writing.
The Privacy Commissioner advised citizens to object, bringing
out a wrong message that all such uses are evil.
We live in a society where everyone needs to depend on others on
goods and services. Thus information on goods and services are
essential for us to make a considered choice. All companies
provide such information we call advertisement. But there are
so much of them and many are on goods and services we do not
need. So it is a better arrangement for the information to
target customers in need of them instead of flooding the world
with all of them. To do so, companies may need to know who
their customers are and what they want. There is where personal
data come into play.
The dichotomy of the work of the commercial world and personal
privacy is hard to resolve. A similar case is the tracking of
web surfing data. Companies track such data to improve the
placement of advertisement but citizens do not want to be
tracked. In order to devise legislation on regulating such
activities, the USA Federal Trade Commission brought privacy
advocates and online advertising industry together to work out a
compromise. The discussion has been going on for over a year
but there is no sign of any agreement. IT World recently has an
article on the situation which you may like to read in
full.
Despite the wish to work out a compromise, any agreement reached
would be less favourable for the companies than the present
unregulated scenario. The disagreement comes down to the basic
definition of some common terms. The article points out some
essential points where there could be mistrust on both sides.
1. Redefining track
When we think of web tracking, we probably think of someone or
something recording what we do as we browse a website. When the
online advertisement industry says track, they really mean
"target advertisement based on your web surfing history." So
when a network says you can opt out of tracking, they actually
mean "you can elect to not see targeted advertisement".
Information about you will still be collected and added to your
profile. Some data would be collected for the purpose of
assessing the advertisement placed, but some may be collected
for other reasons.
2. Redefining anonymity
Advertising companies claim that tracking data is collected
anonymously. Therefore the network cannot identify a person or
match the web history to a real identity. But that is not
entirely true. Anonymous tracking is not always anonymous. A
Stanford researcher who is a member of the do-not-track working
group demonstrated on a few occasions that this is not so.
Another programmer who attempts to provide transparency into the
world of web tracking acknowledged that "in certain cases, data
may be combined with other sources to produce more detailed
profiles."
3. Redefining choice
When adding the Do-not-track option in Internet browsers,
companies claim that they are enabling a choice for consumer.
It is only half-hearted, presuming web users do not easily
choose this option. When Microsoft includes in Internet
Explorer 10 for the Do-not-track option to be turned on by
default, many web designers simply ignore that setting. And
when Mozilla announced that it was thinking about blocking
third-party cookies in Firefox, the advertising industry reacted
fiercely, claiming it would be counterproductive for consumers
and business.
4. Redefining free
A key argument on why tracking is necessary comes down to the
advertising money which keeps some web companies going. Without
tracking, advertisers argue, the "free" web will cease to
exist. Some even claim that Do-not-track will ultimately kill
free speech by putting web sites out of business. This is
certainly not the business models many websites are pursuing. A
free (free-of-charge) web is different from a free-speech web.
I think all these doubling talking may just be an illusion. If
you have a good understanding of how Internet browsing works,
you will know that data exchange between the user and the
website is a basic technical requirement. For the two parties
to interact, information request will need to be sent to the
website, and the website must need to know where the information
should be forwarded to. Data exchange is a stream of bits of 1
and 0 moving in high speed. Both ends will need to capture the
data, store it in cache, and then process them and display them
in the proper format. Information stay in the cache, working
area and in temporary files for quite some time in order to
speed up the processing speed should the information be required
again. That means all sort of data, including personal data,
browsing history, and preferred information are all tracked and
stored by default. The Do-not-track option may simply mean that
the users are not alerted of their data being used. What the
privacy advocates should concern is how the companies make use
of the personal data.
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