Data Inspectorate visit of 6 online newspapers gave up to 200 cookies – journalist

Inspectorate presented Tuesday a report that shows the extensive use of technology to collect and analyze large amounts of data about individuals.

– Between 100 and 200 cookies were placed on our browser when visiting the front to six Norwegian newspapers, commenting Inspectorate overall.

Seller profiles

User Profiles are sold one by one on global ad exchanges. This allows for very targeted marketing. The information about what people are doing online, combined with personal information, provide a basis for bid on the opportunity to expose people for targeted ads.

– The bidder with the highest bid wins the right to show you a adverticing when loaded up, said Inspectorate.

No one knows what they know

Users may not notice the customized advertising before they register that the same adverts popping up again and again websites they visit.

– No industry in the world know more about us. Hundreds of businesses know very much, but we do not know who knows and what they know. That is the main reason why we will look into the ad industry’s collection and use of personal data, writes Inspectorate.

They find the scale and the hidden collection problematic:

– If we lose control over our personal data, we also lose the ability to define who we are.

Privacy subjected

It becomes very difficult to maintain privacy when you do not have insight into the data collected, how this is done, who treats the information, the extent of their use and implications of the use of the data has.

– Should we make a good policy, it requires transparency, accountability and verifiability. Today’s global advertising market closed, complex and retracted, said Inspectorate, which proposes a number of decisions to open up the industry and provide transparency.

Pros and Cons

For most people, the direct benefit of monitoring that they have access to large amounts of free Internet services, such as social media, email, blog pages, search services, encyclopedias and news. These pages are free because they sell information about users and get advertising revenue from targeted marketing.

The disadvantages are the more. In addition to that many may find it uncomfortable that they are monitored in this way, it will give them poorer choices when they are only exposed to ads from a single supplier. Compares not customers products and services may not sellers compete on quality. It can cause that consumers are offered products and services of increasingly lower quality.

When advertisers and hidden fundraisers of information determines what people will see and offered, this opens further unwarranted and invisible discrimination.

– Although the data used as a basis for the decision is correct, they may give an unfair and discriminatory results for the individual, notes Inspectorate.