What's to Come

What About Our Privacy?

I just finished reading an interesting article on IPTV and privacy Risks By Jeffrey Krauss, President of Telecommunications and Technology Policy. It talks about idea that the carrier can keep a record of what I watch and maybe even use it for more personalized marketing in the future. It also talks about aggregating most-watched programs into a What's Hot category and could they eventually do a What's Hot in my household list!

Really, this is a great discussion and has implications on trends in Washington regarding technology and our rights to privacy. On the other hand, marketers have been aggregating behavioral data about consumers for a long time. Back to one of my earlier premises, Consumers have gained significant control over their media with more choices and control over what they see and when they see it.. The winners will understand and embrace the consumers ability to control their media and ads coming their way. The consumers inherently understand the economics of ad supported programming and are willing to see ads for a fair price on the programming. The better and more relevant the ads are to the consumer, the less concern about invasion of their privacy. If it turns into a free-for-all with abuse of this information and lack of consumer control, then there will be a big back-lash and ultimately legislation that severely limits what can be used.

This brings us to personally identifiable information. What exactly does that mean? I took a look at the definition in my Sprint PCS Privacy Statement. It calls it Customer Proprietary Network Information or CPNI and states The FCC does not deem a customer's name, service address or telephone number to be CPNI, consistent with the publication of this information in telephone directories. HMMMM. There's non-public personal info like credit card numbers and bank account numbers that are protected, but it seems there are loop holes on the other stuff. I think it is somewhat debatable that the emergence of new technologies and services like IPTV encroach on our privacy more than what is already known out there. Data providers already collect a tremendous amount of data on each of us. The key is who ultimately controls the spigot!

posted by Andy Huckaba @ 10:52 AM