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FEBRUARY 21, 2012 – Smartphone applications can present an opportunity for brands to interact with consumers, and, with the users' permission, conduct market research on certain behaviors.
However, the line between research and invasion of privacy sometimes gets crossed. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Google and other advertising companies have been essentially ignoring Apple iPhone and computer users' privacy settings to get more information on their online browsing habits.
"The companies used special computer code that tricks Apple's Safari web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users," according to the newspaper, even though Safari is "designed to block such tracking by default."
Originally, the code was discovered by Jonathan Mayer, a researcher at Stanford. A statement Google provided to the Journal in response to the investigation said the paper "mischaracterized" the situation.
"We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled," the tech-giant said. "It's important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information."
The company has recently been working to overhaul its privacy policy.
The digital marketing industry has been working to set ethics standards that address how it monitors consumers' online behaviors. A November article from the University of Pennsylvania's online business school journal, Knowledge@Wharton, addressed the fact that many data miners have been labeled with the name "cyberrazzi."
Consumers are starting to demand more information about how their personal data is logged and used, especially with the rise of social media, the source notes. Anindya Ghose, a visiting professor at Wharton and co-director of New York University's Center for Digital Economy Research, told the publication that he was an advocate for companies using his details if it meant he would receive more relevant offers and targeted advertising that benefits him as a consumer.
"Companies can use my interaction with my friends on Facebook to personalize and highly customize products and services for me," he said. "Such personalization would take into account not just one individual's web-browsing behavior, but also the behaviors of connections within that person's social network."
Yet others are skeptical that the data will only be used for good. Lee Tien – a senior staff attorney at San Francisco-based nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation – told the outlet that there's potential for insurers or healthcare companies to monitor personal habits (such as smoking) and risky behavior, and use that as the basis to reject a claim.
