Privacy Talk with Raashee Gupta Erry, Founder and Principal of Uplevel: What has changed and progressed in the digital industry during your 2-year term at FTC?
“This interview recorded on 9th February 2023 is talking about privacy and digital marketing.”
Kohei is having great time discussing privacy and digital marketing.
This interview outline:
- Could you tell us your work in the digital media & marketing and public sector?
- What has changed and progressed in the digital industry during your 2-year term at FTC?
- Could you tell us your work in the digital media & marketing and public sector?
Raashee: industry is going through a lot of change and pressure because of privacy, because of regulatory action.
We know that there is not a federal privacy law unlike GDPR here in the United States, but states are really driving this environment of privacy focus in the United States.
We have five laws that are in place now and more being passed and considered this year. So it really has upleveled the need for privacy as it relates to advertising and marketing and it is a critical time for the advertising and marketing industry since it has always been unregulated.
It’s never been scrutinized that much. it has evolved over time where everything and everywhere you go, is tracked by multiple parties in multiple different ways.
This has led to this increased pressure where regulators consider it to be consumer harm. It’s harmful for consumers to constantly be watched, tracked and their behaviors are shared and data is shared and sold and they’re constantly being surveilled..
This has led to a lot of regulatory pressure. And this regulatory pressure is twofold. Firstly, state laws are coming about and secondly, we are starting to see a lot more enforcement actions and enforcement actions are targeting different problems under privacy, whether it’s children’s privacy, health data, privacy, location data, not being transparent in their privacy policies, not being able to correct their behavior.
So the pressure is twofold. One is laws, and the other is enforcement actions.
Kohei: Thank you for sharing. I think the Federal Trade Commission has been taking a more strong stance against the privacy breach at this moment. So is there any progress throughout your experience of two years in public institutions?
Maybe the American regulator is becoming very against privacy infringement in this sense? Do you have any insights from your perspective?
- What has changed and progressed in the digital industry during your 2-year term at FTC?
Raashee: Talking about FTC and just in my time there, I’ve definitely seen a lot more focus and emphasis on sensitive areas that are considered to be more privacy breaching. Health privacy is a big big area. companies who are collecting the data have to be responsible for the data.
One example from just a couple of days ago is FTC’s enforcement action on GoodRX. It’s a digital health platform. That is collecting people’s sensitive data because they were using the coupons and their platform to get discounts.
This data was then used for running ads. And also it was contrary to the privacy promise that was made as the company said that we’re not doing this in the privacy policy, but they were completely doing the opposite.
Further they failed to disclose this under the health breach notification rules-. Another example from a year and a half ago is the Flo mobile app. App tracked and collected a lot of female health data and was then misusing that data and not being transparent to users.
Second area of focus is children’s privacy.
In the US COPPA, which is Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, is in place which is geared towards protecting children’s privacy in the digital world.
And there were a couple big enforcement actions that took place. One was Fortnight, the video game where it used dark patterns to children and consumers into purchases, and the default settings were violating the privacy of the kids.
And the third area of concern that is starting to become more prominent is location data. Location information of where people are going, and this is also considered personal information.
OpenX, the same company, within the same settlement was in violation with the location data. Another action was of Kochava, an ad tech company which was selling geolocation data of millions of people when they’re visiting sensitive areas like religious institutions or health clinics and places like that.
These areas point to this sectoral element to privacy in the United States.
Kohei: It’s a very big point then in the United States. And thank you for sharing the insights. Maybe just a lot of marketers are trying to use the personal data as much as they can to create a more optimized marketing output.
in order to create the efforts, from the privacy perspective, I think you mentioned on the LinkedIn post that trust is very important with customers. A lot of the marketers should consider the trust relationship with the customers for data utilities. So in this case, what should the company consider to build trust with privacy?So could you share your idea with that?
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