Customer Intelligence

Several states have stepped into the evolving Internet-privacy debate. Minnesota, for example, requires Internet service providers to get consumers' permission before disclosing information about their online activity. In California, businesses must tell consumers what personal information is being collected from them online and what companies they plan to share it with.
Rules are beginning to evolve at the federal level as well. Last summer, the FTC charged that Twitter had failed to protect consumers from hackers that retrieved tweets believed to be private, as well as so-called direct messages, or private notes between users. In December, the agency offered a framework for dealing with the burgeoning issue, suggesting that companies begin to offer a do-not-track option. FTC officials also recommended that companies set up their own regulatory standards. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), a Washington trade group of advertisers, newspaper and magazine properties, has signed more than 100 companies onto a project that would standardize a clickable icon that gives consumers the choice to opt out of having their online movements tracked across many sites. "We agree that you should empower consumers not to have data collected and used for advertising purposes if you don't want it to be," says Michael Zaneis, the IAB's general counsel. "But we have to be careful in shaping these policies." The increased scrutiny sparked by Internet-privacy concerns has become a challenge for many Web companies, like Facebook, that have only recently established a lobbying presence in Washington



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