When Targeted Advertising Can Add to an Emotional Burden
Monday, March 25th, 2019Increasingly, targeted behavioral advertising is in the news. Sometimes, the ads created and displayed to individuals are innocuous. But the targeted advertising also can add to a person’s emotional burden at difficult times, as detailed in a recent case below.
Targeted behavioral advertising is where a user’s online activity is tracked so that ads can be served based on the user’s behavior. What began as online data gathering has expanded — now there’s online and offline data collection and the tracking of consumers’ habits. Companies can also buy information on individuals from data brokers.
Some people are uncomfortable with the tracking and targeting by companies and attempt to opt out; by declining to be tracked via e-mail address or by having your Web browser send an opt-out signal to a company as you conduct your online activity. Opt-out puts the burden on consumers to learn about what the privacy policies are, whether they protect consumer data, whom the data is shared with and for what purpose, and how to opt out of this data collection, use and sharing. Consumer advocates support opt-in policies, where companies have an incentive to create strong privacy protections and use limitations so consumers will choose to share their data.
People also have installed ad-blocker technology to avoid seeing ads. But there has been a battle. For example, Apple’s Safari browser and Mozilla’s Firefox browser have included anti-tracking technology for years. However, some companies choose not to respect Do Not Track signals sent by Web browsers.
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