Euro privacy watchdog calls for end of targeted advertising plus a squeeze on the processing of personal info
- Reference: 1613024825
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/02/11/eu_ad_rules/
- Source link:
"Given the multitude of risks associated with online targeted advertising, the EDPS urges the co-legislators to consider additional rules going beyond transparency," Wiewiorówski's report
[1]PDF
says.[2]
"Such measures should include a phase-out leading to a prohibition of targeted advertising on the basis of pervasive tracking, as well as restrictions in relation to the categories of data that can be processed for targeting purposes and the categories of data that may be disclosed to advertisers or third parties to enable or facilitate targeted advertising."
UK watchdog sniffs around Google Chrome's Privacy Sandbox as it may give Choc Factory all the sweeties [3]READ MORE
[4]
Targeted online ads get aimed at individuals by giants like Google and Facebook that harvest the online habits of internet users so they can deliver marketing that corresponds with detected or inferred interests. Typically, such precision comes at the cost of privacy.
Google has been a staunch advocate for targeted advertising, which the company insists leads to more relevant ads and better revenue for publishers – a claim that has been disputed. But faced with pressure from privacy advocates, a creeping thicket of privacy regulations, and competitors that exploit its soft spot for surveillance, Google has committed to phasing out a major mechanism for delivering targeted web ads – third-party browser cookies. Consequently, it has been scrambling to develop alternative systems for aiming ads through its [5]Privacy Sandbox project . For the online ad industry, it's a race against regulation.
The coming storm
In December, 2020, the European Parliament introduced two proposals to reform online interaction, the Digital Services Act ( [6]DSA ) and the Digital Markets Act ( [7]DMA ).
The DSA and DMA aim to clarify the responsibilities of online service providers, platforms, and gatekeepers, to protect people's rights online, and to provide a governance structure that encourages both innovation and competition. The former is focused on how digital service providers handle content while the latter concerns itself with the behavior of gatekeepers.
Neither of these proposals has been finalized or formally adopted; they will be hashed out in the European Parliament and by EU member states through the Council of the European Union in the months and years ahead. But even before they were introduced, US technology companies like Google – a primary target of the proposals – were [8]lobbying against potential restrictions.
Last October, Karan Bhatia, VP of government affairs and public policy at Google, [9]warned that the DSA could prevent Google from developing user-centric features like surfacing a map with the nearest restaurant in response to the search query "Thai food nearby."
And when the proposals debuted in December, the US Chamber of Commerce, a private sector advocacy group, [10]said , "Based on preliminary review, the US Chamber is concerned about the direction of today’s proposals, which target American companies almost exclusively by imposing onerous new regulatory requirements backed by steep financial penalties."
Regulation roulette
Wiewiorówski's advocacy for an eventual prohibition on targeted advertising may be more of a negotiating position than a realistic goal.
His opinion talks about clarifying restrictions on the sharing of personal info with advertisers for tailored web ads. The compromise position among privacy-minded Eurocrats appears to be, at very least, to make targeted advertising opt-in.
That's still a bridge too far for companies like Google and Facebook that have fought tooth-and-nail to preserve the opt-out regime they've traditionally enjoyed. But given the social media-driven turmoil of 2020 and early 2021, ongoing antitrust concerns about internet giants, and repeated privacy scandals related to data harvesting, it's hard to imagine that internet companies will be able to continue operating in a lightly regulated environment.
In an email to The Register , Dr Lukasz Olejnik, an independent privacy researcher and consultant, said he expects the EDPS opinion will be very influential as the DSA proposal get debated in Brussels.
"In this particular case it plays along the sentiment already expressed by a few political groups in the European parliament, which was also felt in the last summers' resolution calling for a ban on micro-targeted ads," Olejnik said. "There will be a strong opposition though, and considering the fact that ban is not included in the original proposal filed by the European Commission, I have some doubts about a full ban. However, many things will remain in flux this and likely also the next year."
Olejnik said it's too early to tell whether calls to ban targeted ads can be satisfied with the Privacy Sandbox solutions being tested by Google and other ad industry firms.
But if Privacy Sandbox technologies like Google's Federated Learning of Cohorts ( [11]FloC ) algorithm prove sufficiently private for EU lawmakers, "the call for a ban on targeted ads could be neatly realized on a fait accompli basis," he said.
[12]
"This would then make policymakers very happy as they could claim that they scored a success, even though the technology was going in this direction regardless." ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://edps.europa.eu/sites/edp/files/publication/21-02-10-opinion_on_digital_services_act_en.pdf
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_personal_tech/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YCUOUZT9sUb-IyS5roI6MgAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/09/uk_watchdog_google/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_personal_tech/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YCUOUZT9sUb-IyS5roI6MgAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/25/google_targeted_advertising/
[6] https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-services-act-ensuring-safe-and-accountable-online-environment_en
[7] https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en
[8] https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/more-responsible-innovative-and-helpful-internet-europe/
[9] https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/the-digital-services-act-must-not-harm-europes-economic-recovery/
[10] https://www.uschamber.com/press-release/us-chamber-concerned-european-commission-digital-services-and-digital-markets
[11] https://github.com/WICG/floc
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_personal_tech/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YCUOUZT9sUb-IyS5roI6MgAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Online transparency
In respect of transparency, the EDPS opinion concentrates on that relating to online advertising, as this is a key element of the proposed Digital Services Act. However [1]our research into online transparency in general strongly suggests that this narrow emphasis could result in yet more toothless legislation. We found that no online organisation in our large random sample had so far fulfilled the GDPR transparency obligation satisfactorily in practical terms, and that even official guidance currently contributes to this failure.
This really matters, as transparency is the absolute basis on which exercise of data subjects' rights rests. In its absence the GDPR is effectively nullified as a protection - you can't object to something you haven't been told about and you can't exercise your rights if you don't know what they are in respect of what you want to object to.
[1] http://www.businessinforisk.co.uk/library/Awful_not_Lawful-final-BiR.pdf
No advertising
I hate advertising of any sort.I hate it on TV, I hate it on the Radio and I hate it on computers.
"Targeted" advertising seems to be mainly about asking me to buy stuff i have just bought or looked at. NOT INTERESTED. I turn of as much advertising as I can on my computer, and it is never enough.
On theTV in the UK I tend to avoid as much advertising as i can. Mainly by pre-recording stuff and then skipping the adds. In fact I find it so painful I really try and avoid watching programs "live". If we do then generally we just pause the TV whilst the adverts run.
Americans seem willing to put up with a lot more adverts than in the UK. Here a 90 minute game of football lasts 90 minutes (Plus the half time interval), when you have a sport that does not seem to care any more about the game itself and seems to be only concerned about showing adverts (Superbowl anyone). I mean a 1 hour game that can take 3 or 4 hours because of adverts. What are you people thinking!.
But then it seems the corporate interests seem to be paramount in America,
Re: No advertising
In Spain on many top tv programs you will see ad breaks of 15 minutes or more and sometimes a couple of minutes after a film has resumed there will be another shorter break.
I assume that hasn't changed as I haven't watched anything in at least five years.
The closest thing to a 'relevant' ad that I ever see on the internet are one or two of the ads at the top of a search page when I am actually looking for a product.
Google are complaining that the proposed legislation will affect such things as " nearest Thai food" requests, all the questioner has to do is change the terms to name the area or location.
The same applies to most of their objections.
In reality Targetted Advertising from Google and FB's point of view is an advertising ploy that targets the buyers of their services, ad companies, surprisingly enough are suckers for targetted advertising, as for the rest of us, not so much.
Re: No advertising
I also dislike advertising, but we can't get away from the fact that it pays for much of what we have. Before all the various subscription platforms arrived it used to be calculated that UK independent TV got 3x - 4x as much income from advertising as the BBC did from the license fee. Remove it, and the money has to come from somewhere else.
Targeted advertising is so badly done as to be a waste of time, most targeted ads I see seem to be based on previous purchasing history, and as you say why would I want to see an ad for something I already bought? I have occasionally bought something as a result of an advert, but that was something I didn't know I wanted :) Targeted advertising would have been useless there.
But then it seems the corporate interests seem to be paramount in America,
Not just America. Businesses aren't charities, someone has to pay for their products or there wouldn't be any products.
Re: No advertising
"....UK independent TV got 3x - 4x as much income from advertising as the BBC did......Remove it, and the money has to come from somewhere else."
But in the pre-web days this greater income didn't mean that ITV and CH4 made much better programmes than the BBC. Sure, they made some good ones, and CH4 revolutionized cricket coverage but there wasn't a quality gap that showed, IMO. I wonder where the money went?
Re: No advertising
"Americans seem willing to put up with a lot more adverts than in the UK."
OFCOM has set a maximum amount of time allowed for adverts, 12 minutes per hour.
Weak example?
features like surfacing a map with the nearest restaurant in response to the search query "Thai food nearby."
I can't help thinking that this is a weak example for Google to use to try and defend their position!
That query isn't exactly a new feature, the only personal information it needs is the user's location at the time of the query (so continual tracking not required), it's a specific query (e.g. "Thai", not "restaurants I might like based on my past culinary history/food shopping"), and assuming that most Thai restaurants are not part of a large chain then the value proposition of Google/FaceBook (or other targeted Ads) to a single restaurant is pretty small....
Show me as many ads for cheap women's clothing as you like!
Not what you're thinking, honest … It's just that, when I see an ad like that on El Reg, my confidence in my tracking countermeasures is increased.
Re: Show me as many ads for cheap women's clothing as you like!
How many cheap women do you have to buy clothes for?
Re: Show me as many ads for cheap women's clothing as you like!
And how did you find a cheap woman?
Erich Mielke
would now be a Billionaire if he were still alive today.