| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : JULY 26, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BUSINESS WEEK E.BIZ -- COVER STORY
Commentary: Washington Must Step In to Protect E-Privacy George Orwell's vision of Big Brother was government run amok. But it's not government that threatens privacy today. It's Internet commerce. As the Web morphs into a marketplace, personal information has devolved into a commodity. Want to reach, say, 25-year-old males who like country music, earn more than $53,000 a year, and live in Chicago? No problem. Data-mining companies such as Boston's Art Technology Group can give interested companies their addresses. Want to snoop on a business rival? MyEureka and other brands of business intelligence software will help fish out tax filings, corporate credit-card receipts, and other goodies from offline databases. Now, with the proposed merger of online advertiser DoubleClick Inc. and Abacus Direct Corp., a direct-marketing outfit, the tools that companies deploy to snoop on consumers could become much more refined. Abacus Direct stockpiles data on more than 2.4 billion consumer purchases through 1,100 catalogs. DoubleClick, which places and evaluates online ads over a network of 1,500 Web sites, wants to meld Abacus' data with its own on Web surfing habits so it can target ads to those most likely to buy. If Washington regulators don't block the $1 billion merger, DoubleClick will gain access to Abacus' data on the purchasing habits of 88 million U.S. households. So in theory, you could be browsing a Web page on mutual funds and seconds later, get a call from a telemarketer with some eerily dead-on sales pitch for financial products. Is this sinister, or merely creepy? The answer lies in scenarios that exceed DoubleClick's reach today, but may not tomorrow. Abacus tracks your taste in clothes. But other data-miners may be more interested in your medical records. Pair their information with data from your ''clickstream,'' and the first time you visit a doctor for an HIV test, or browse an AIDS newsgroup, it might trigger a flurry of E-mail hawking some new AIDS drug. Once your online persona is linked to your offline identity--name, address, and Social Security number--those messages could show up in your office E-mail. And depending on who owns the information, it could wend its way to your health insurer. It's the linkages that are really jarring. Currently, cookies that advertisers place on a Web user's computer hard drive track that person's online behavior. But today, these cookies don't reveal a person's name or address. The DoubleClick-Abacus deal would change that. It would, for the first time, link a large offline database--with name, address, and credit-card info--with data about shoppers' online habits. That makes privacy activists howl. In a June 21 letter to DoubleClick and Abacus, activists said the merger would create a ''surveillance machine of unprecedented breadth and depth'' that jeopardizes Net users' anonymity. To be sure, no company hoping to build trust among customers would willfully stomp all over their privacy. And DoubleClick President Kevin Ryan argues that consumers can simply tell DoubleClick they don't want to be put into a database. All this is clear from DoubleClick's ''opt-out'' policies, which are posted on the company's Web site. But that's asking a lot of online consumers: First, they have to know that they are being tracked. Second, they have to know who is serving up all those banner ads. Then they have to visit DoubleClick and track down its policies. That's daunting even for busy Netizens, let alone for the two-thirds of Americans who have yet to venture online. And even if every consumer knew all about opt-out policies, who is going to hold DoubleClick--or any other data-mining company--to the promises in their privacy policies? Most online companies insist that they can regulate themselves. Maybe. But as online direct marketing becomes more successful, the value of personal information will soar--as will the temptations to abuse it. Right now, victims have no clear legal recourse. And while nobody wants a Big Brother in Washington policing the Internet, someone must enforce standards for the handling of personal data. Right now, only the federal government can fill those shoes. BY MARCIA STEPANEK _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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