from the you-are-in-a-maze-of-twisty-little-privacy-settings,-all-different dept.
Advertisers want exemption from web privacy rules that, you know, enforce privacy
Amid the final rulemaking before the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is scheduled to take effect next year, five ad industry groups have asked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to remove a requirement that businesses honor the privacy choices internet users make through browser settings, extensions, or other controls.
[...] The CCPA, which takes effect in January, 2020, will provide Californians with greater legal privacy protections than anywhere else in the US (though still short of Europe's GDPR), putting pressure on federal lawmakers who are trying to formulate consistent privacy rules for the entire country. Meanwhile, technology and ad companies have been trying to gut the CCPA and would welcome a weaker federal standard that supersedes the California law.
The privacy rules includes a consumer right to know whether information is being collected, to request details about the information categories collected, to know what personal information is collected, to refuse to have information collected, to delete collected information, and bans any degredation of service if the user opts to retain their privacy.
Among its requirements, the law says, "If a business collects personal information from consumers online, the business shall treat user-enabled privacy controls, such as a browser plugin or privacy setting or other mechanism, that communicate or signal the consumer's choice to opt-out of the sale of their personal information as a valid request [under the law]."
In a December 6th letter obtained by MediaPost reporter Wendy Davis and provided to The Register as a courtesy, the five ad industry groups – The American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As), the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the American Advertising Federation (AAF), and the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) – complain to Becerra that such proposals would harm consumer choice.
[...] The Register asked the IAB for comment and a spokesperson pointed to pages 13 and 14 of its letter, which suggests Becerra adopt rules that allow information collecting businesses to ignore privacy controls "if the business includes a 'Do Not Sell My Personal Information' link and offers another method for consumers to opt-out of personal information sale by the business."
In the past, the US Federal Trade Commission has not looked kindly on ignoring browser-expressed privacy choices. In 2012, Google agreed to pay $22.5m for, among other things, circumventing the privacy controls in Apple's Safari browser.
In a statement emailed to The Register, Mozilla stressed that privacy settings should be easy to use and said it would be irresponsible and wrong to ignore the preferences users express through their browser settings.
"Of course, that is also why organizations like the Interactive Advertising Bureau find requirements like those in CCPA so threatening, because those requirements empower people to limit what data advertisers collect about them – and empower regulators to investigate and enforce if they don't," a Mozilla spokesperson said.
"So, the more hurdles that can be thrown in the way of setting adoptions like recognizing browser or plug-in flags, the longer such data can be traded and sold when mechanisms are limited."
Mozilla said that in the absence of standard mechanisms to express privacy preferences, it has enabled Enhanced Tracking Protection by default to help consumers regain control over those attempting to track their browsing activity online. ®
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nuke on Tuesday December 10 2019, @08:00PM (1 child)
Burglars want exemption from laws against burglary.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @08:40PM
The recommended term is, 'Asset Relocation Specialists'.
The term 'burglar' was deemed prejudicial by the members of the profession, and negatively impacted growth in the industry, and societal acceptance.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 10 2019, @08:40PM (6 children)
The ad industry needs tracking to justify the jobs that support tracking. Nobody else needs it, not the advertisers, not the consumers.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday December 10 2019, @10:44PM (3 children)
Advertisers pay more for ad space with increased visibility (via interruption) or more precise targeting (via behavior tracking) than for ad space with neither.
The difference is that unlike web ads, TV ads interrupt the program.
Radio ads likewise interrupt the program. If ads on a publisher's text-based website were to interrupt the reader with pop-ups or countdown prestitials, Google would apply a search ranking demotion to the publisher for violation of the Initial Better Ads Standards [betterads.org].
With Google demoting interruption and CCPA banning tracking, this regulation is likely to put a lot of websites behind a paywall for California residents. Consider what happened when newspapers outside the EU attempted to comply with GDPR in May 2018, offering different options to readers behind EU IP addresses compared to IP addresses outside the EU. The Washington Post added an ad-free tier [digiday.com], and Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune blocked EU readers entirely [cnn.com].
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 11 2019, @02:15AM
No reason not to go back to that again. Cheaper for everyone except Google and the rest of the advertising industry.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday December 11 2019, @09:57AM
Advertisers are also buying ads on newspapers. And ads on newspapers are physically unable to interrupt.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday December 11 2019, @10:21AM
TV ads pause the program so you can go pee.
Then there's magazine and newspaper ads which do not track and most people skim past. Then there's billboards where people are actually supposed to be looking at the road and other cars rather than the billboards.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday December 10 2019, @11:30PM (1 child)
For now. The key is, advertisers will pay MORE for targeted ads. It may or may not happen down the road, but advertisers would love nothing more than to make sure you can't turn on your TV without a net connection, it collects everything it or other devices around you sees/hears, so when you sneeze it will start playing a commercial for allergy medicine. The hardware is there, they just need to convince people that outliers are unimportant enough to cut off anyone doing things the "old" way.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 11 2019, @01:46AM
Tell that to P&G or Unilever [businessinsider.com]. They both cut back significantly on digital ads because the metrics weren't there.
If you use google or amazon, you've seen targeted ads. Not very effective, are they? Showing you stuff you already bought ... yep, that's really money well spent.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:08PM (12 children)
I just love how it is that a website will detect my ad-blocker, and then offer a page of instructions on how to disable it! Do they imagine that an ad-blocker accidentally got installed on my browser? Do they not realize that I probably know how to disable it, since I was the user that enabled it, after installing it? Amazing.
Then there is the cookie-begging. "We use cookies only for good, please enable them." Yeah, right. I click "allow cookies" and then block them mercilessly. I guess all the measures I take are not really legal, since obviously I do not know what I am doing, and these idiots' website all are broken on my browser. Which is a good thingtm!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:23PM (4 children)
Surprised they don't try to play on users' association that cookies are tasty and loaded with sugar. Mmmmm. Good cookies!
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:57PM (1 child)
You just reminded me of the shitfest of cleaning cookies out of windows in the old days. Was it index.dat holding the cookies or something else?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday December 11 2019, @12:07AM
I don't use IE much, but AFAIK, you've always been able to open Internet Options from IE or control panel, click "Privacy" tab, click "Sites" button, and there's a "Remove All" option.
Otherwise they're just text files in a folder, in Win7 it's: C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday December 11 2019, @01:15AM (1 child)
Umm, that's exactly why they called them cookies in the first place. As a way to make them sound less creepy
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 11 2019, @01:48AM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:27PM (1 child)
How could it possibly be illegal /not/ to allow something to happen on your computer(*), which is private property? Since when are there laws, where you are required, by law, that you must accept any and all third party crap?
That would be, using the above burglary analogy, be like: you have a door that can be opened, therefore, taking stuff out through that door perfectly fine, regardless who takes what, with out without consent.
(*) Unless you accepted the Windows EULA, in which you acknowledge not to own your private stuff. However, I guess that you are slightly smarter than that.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday December 11 2019, @10:03AM
The software running on your computer already isn't your private property (look at the software license of whatever software you run).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:35PM (1 child)
Only one in a hundred people uses a computer that they actually installed/configured themselves.
When they give you instructions on how to disable your ad blocker, they aren't talking to people like you. They're talking to grandpa/grandma who's computer has been installed and configured by son/daugther/grandson/grandaughter/nephiew/nerd-of-the-neighborhood/etc, or who's preconfigured machine purchased at wallmart/costco/best-buy/etc had an ad blocker installed by the aformentionned son/daugther.... well, you get the point.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday December 11 2019, @10:06AM
Give them a pi hole instead. That way the site's instructions won't work.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:54PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Pino P on Tuesday December 10 2019, @10:53PM (1 child)
Not to mention sites that use Admiral Engage, an anti-adblock tool known for confusing a tracking protection feature built into the Firefox browser with an ad blocker. When I visit Daring Fireball [daringfireball.net] and Read the Docs [readthedocs.io] with Firefox tracking protection turned all the way on, I see every single ad. This is because these sites display ads from a server controlled by the site's publisher and don't track individual users' browsing history across different publishers' sites. But because sites using Engage tend to rely on interest-based ad networks and ad exchanges, Engage treats inability to contact interest-based ad servers as blocking ads rather than telling the site to show tracking-free fallback ads to this viewer.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday December 11 2019, @05:38PM
I suspect it's less confusion and more big fat lie. It sounds so much more reasonable to ask to let ads display to fund a website than "Please drop all defenses so we can dart and tag you like a bear and unleash the unholy hordes of hell upon your defenseless browser. We will, of course, disavow all responsibility for the actions of the unholy horde as we do not in any way vet the ads, viruses, banking trojans, and crypto miners that we will send to you using the privacy busting third party.".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @11:17PM
considering their track record on this issue. It's gonna be funny when they end up on the shit end of the stick. Try and explain to a judge how all that hypocritical shit they said, really was just in error, and that they didn't know that their software did all the evil shit that they made it do by default.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday December 11 2019, @02:14AM (1 child)
I have a hunch that if the law goes into effect without being neutered first, the data fiends will come up with an alternative scheme that accomplishes their goals without violating the letter of the law, and browser developers will help them implement it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @02:51PM
Your not.
The law is a lot like source code. It is what you don't say that matters. Where the two differ, is that you can say things in source code that don't compile in English.
There is no world where English majors with law degrees anticipate the machinations of software engineers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Wednesday December 11 2019, @02:59AM
Extending the topic a bit, but has it ever been studied what economic effects an outright advertising ban (or a severe limitation) would have? I gave it a quick search, and found a 1986 paper by Susan L. Holak and Srinivas K. Reddy, also one from 2017 by The Economist Intelligence Unit and Instituto Alana. But these were relatively limited and focused on the effects of the advertising, rather than the effects of dissolving a large part of the industry and putting the workforce to good use elsewhere (like urgently needed cleanup of rotting radioactive waste dumps).
Communicating updates about prices might be helpful for competition, but plainly purchasing goodwill for brands (which most advertising today is about) seems to be deadweight that an economy has to drag around, in term of cost for its creation, in distraction of the recipients, and in distorting perceived goodwill from actual. In its function for online micropayment, advertising seems awfully ineffective and could easily be replaced by flat deals by the providers, or just letting the market create working solutions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @01:57PM
hmmm .. maybe i would reserve some space on my website for product manufacturers that give away free stocks of themselfs.
obviously the math is rather simple to calculate how many stocks one could give away instead of purchasing space from google.
anyways ... with the free stock in hand my web visitor has a high chance of becoming a more loyal customer ... after all holding the stock
kindda amounts to a discount on all products of the manufacturer (dividends) and might even entice the customer to chose the "free stock shop" item when presented with a equal but other product ... which, you know kindda increases sales which might lead to more profit and more dividends ^_^
in any case, the advertising industry has two jobs: making "good ads" and keeping the people paying for ads enthralled in the believe that ads actually work.