Advertisers set their strategies according to damaging
stereotypes.
What do you think of
when you hear the words “internet surveillance”?
If you’ve been
following the news, you might be thinking about the National
Security Agency’s PRISM spying program. Or maybe you’re recalling
debates about the age-old battle between security and liberty and deciding
where to draw the line.
That’s not the whole
story, though. Corporations don’t just hand over your personal information to
the government — they also sell it to advertisers and make a hefty profit in
return.
Middlemen like
the Acxiom
Corporation purchase data from a variety of Internet
companies and use it to craft extremely detailed consumer profiles on all of
us. So even if you’re careful never to share too much information with any one
website or browser, all your data still could be aggregated by a third-party
data broker. Advertisers buy thousands of these profiles so they can use the intimate
details of our lives to target us with personalized ads.
And about those “personalized ads” — this isn’t about Facebook learning you prefer Coke over Pepsi. This is about corporations targeting us where we’re vulnerable. This is about your Latina neighbor who sees ads for risky high-interest credit cards. This is about your cousin who just got laid off and now sees ad after ad selling him dangerous fast-cash offers and subprime mortgages. This is about your friend who lives in a rougher part of town and sees higher prices whenever he shops online. This is about all of us.
These ads aren’t
personalized — they’re predatory.
Sometimes,
corporations steer their ads away from poorer communities entirely. They use
the profiles to assign users
“e-scores,” secret numbers that rank people according to how
valuable companies believe they are as consumers. Affluent internet users with
higher e-scores receive coupons and ads for low-interest credit, while those
with lower e-scores are overlooked and even targeted with high-interest payday
loans.
Online shopping sites
use data on income and location to manipulate their prices, again trying to
attract wealthier consumers with discounts and leaving the less fortunate out
in the cold. A Wall Street Journal investigation uncovered direct
evidence of this kind of price discrimination on Staples.com.
Advertisers don’t make
assumptions using only our individual data. They also form judgments based on
damaging stereotypes. You can lose consumer “worth” not because you personally
have a poor credit history, but because people like you have
poor credit histories. Advertisers can target you for your race, your income,
your medical history, your email contacts — just about any information you’ve
ever shared online and quite a bit you probably haven’t meant to share.
Some of the most
damaging stereotypes target specific communities, including people of color.
“Hispanics and other minority groups are often the first victims of predatory
practices against consumers and online identity fraud,” said Javier
Palomarez in a recent statement about a presidential appointee.
This isn’t something
out of a bad sci-fi novel — this is very real and very present.
And none of its
illegal. Our government has been slow to respond to these growing invasions of
privacy, and data brokers have continued to operate without any regulation.
The Internet should be
a place for people to communicate freely without fearing for their privacy. We
need determined action to shed light on questionable data practices and curb
these privacy violations.
Dana Floberg is a policy and legal fellow at Free Press. This
op-ed first appeared on her organization's blog. FreePress.net
