The Federal Trade Commission issued a report on Thursday about the online behavioral advertising and the consumer privacy concerns they raised. The Commission showcased the potential benefits of behavioral advertising for consumers, supporting the industry self-regulation approach.

 

Companies and other organisms that store user data should have a transparent statement about their practices, and should allow consumers to choose whether their information should be collected or not, according to the report. In addition to that, they should provide creative and effective disclosure mechanisms for consumers, that are separated from their often difficult to understand privacy policies.

 

The companies should also be able to ensure the security of the data collected, and to retain data only as long as it is needed to fulfill a legitimate business or law enforcement need. They have also been urged to obtain affirmative express consent before collecting data for behavioral advertising.

 

The report was welcomed by companies and websites involved in behavioral advertising, but privacy groups had something else to say about it.

The Center for Digital Democracy called the commission’s report baby steps for online privacy that ultimately fail to protect the public.

 

Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said in a statement that the commission has embraced a narrow intellectual framework as it examined online marketing and data collection.

 

The Federal Trade Commission is supposed to serve as the nation’s leading consumer protection agency. But for too long it has buried its mandate in the ‘digital’ sand, as far as ensuring U.S. consumer privacy is protected online, Chester said.

 

He went on saying the commission has not sufficiently analyzed the state of the interactive marketing and data collection, and that the commission should have created specific policies for so-called sensitive data, especially in the financial, health, and children/adolescent area.