I KNOW WHO YOU ARE

If you’re reading this I know your IP address, the state and city you live in, where you came from on the web, how much time you spent reading my blog and what you read.  If you replied to my email linking to my blog I could easily spend a few minutes knowing if you are visiting as an individual or through a company location.  I can even find your address via coordinates and do a Google Earth search and catch a bird’s eye view of your home or office.

I am not a hacker.  I am not a data scientist. I have no interest in spying on visitors or circumventing privacy acts.  But simple, often free, third party application tools allow anyone to venture into this nefarious world of invasive spying, leading to data collection on a deeper, much deeper, level.

Once data is collected, it can be harvested.  Yet as we allow this practice to continue, Adobe notes that “82% of global consumers believe that companies collect too much information on consumers.”

It is no longer a paranoid minority that is freaking out.  GFK and Microsoft found that 93% of email users believe that users should be able to opt-out if they don't want the content of their emails to be scanned in order to target ads.  And the Pew Research Center confirms that 86% of U.S. internet users have attempted to remove or mask their online activities.

As an offshoot to this paranoia, ad blocking patches for web surfing have been slowly nipping away at ad based revenue streams for publishers.  It is estimated that 20% of U.S. surfers have installed ad blockers. The number in the Euro zone is a whopping 40%.

Now the brands and data companies are freaking out.

Data thirsty brands and media may be killing the goose laying the golden data egg.  Tables are slowly turning on the data hunters/gatherers as privacy laws and special interest groups begin to educate the consumer that Big Brother, on the government and enterprise level, is watching. The backlash will hurt.

In the coming months this blog will monitor privacy issues with commentary on both benefits and cautions on the state of the business.

Feel free to reply.

WHO WILL SING YOUR PRAISES?

WHO WILL SING YOUR PRAISES?

As the garden walls of privacy fall to invasion from outside influences, managing your online persona becomes paramount.  If you're in business for yourself as a professional (doctor, lawyer) or work in the executive suite of a major corporation, how you are perceived by peers, associates, potential customers and the outside world in general can have a significant impact on your fortunes and even your sanity.

Fortunately, a young start-up saw the need for a personal and brand management tool to improve how the online world sees you.

If you have a negative search result for your name or business, QNARY can help you drive down the appearance of the search result to a lower placement and generally make your rank less visible.

QNARY's team of engineers developed a process that pulls together your search, social and contextual touch-points across the web so that you can manage your online image.

It's a comprehensive tool that will eventually expand to brands, providing a measure of relief to personal and brand PR disasters.

QNARY encourages sign ups at freemium and low cost premium levels.

The video that follows will give you a good overview of the platform (click the enlarge button for a better view).

FACEBOOK - LIKE AN OIL SPILL

It starts with a small drip, drip, drip....

Unchecked and unregulated it can grow to become a looming disaster affecting all aspects of personal and private information. Like the leaking oil in our gulf it will have lasting impact on individual "environments".

When Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook suggests to his employees that there is no such thing as privacy and when Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google insists that privacy should not be an issue if you have nothing to hide, it's time to worry.

Be very, very worried.

The infographs that follow trace the "privacy spill" perpetuated by Facebook in five short years. They tell the story better than I can in this short blog post.

Click on the graphs to enlarge.

A shout out and thanks to a reader (Yen) for passing this along.

ARE COOKIES CRUMBLING?

A move towards greater regulation for privacy comes as surveys in the United States and Europe show that a majority of consumers on both sides of the Atlantic are against corporations monitoring their Internet use for marketing purposes.

According to one of the first independent surveys carried out by the University of California and University of Pennsylvania, two thirds of Americans object to targeted online ads.

A proposed amendment to an EU privacy directive states that national governments should "ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his/her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information."

The amendment, if approved, would have negative implications for the online advertising community, which relies on the placement of cookies on hard drives to enhance the relevance of online ads.

Is the US next in line for government regulation? Recent session debates at AdTech and OMMA suggest that self-regulation may not be enough to stem rising criticism against the harvesting of consumer data.

In the coming weeks, this blog will initiate a debate on platforms that may provide alternatives to government regulation. Stay tuned.