Have privacy reforms gone a step to far in terms of affecting business operations? This appears to be the view of the UK government. Boris Johnson has announced plans for legislation to make it easier to rip up EU regulations and protections, according to The Guardian, and included within this is a likely repeal of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
GDPR was designed to “harmonise” data privacy laws across all of its members countries as well as providing greater protection and rights to individuals. The legislation shifted to balance of power from business and towards consumers in relation to having control over personal data.
The view that things may have drifted too much away from business interests is supported by Dmitri Kazanski, Head of Product, North America, MGID.
Kazanski tells Digital Journal: “Data regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, were introduced in a bid to safeguard user privacy. However, they have made it challenging for publishers to collect audience data using third-party cookies, meaning they are unable to monetize their sites effectively as users are browsing anonymously.”
This has led to a change in business practices, which Kazanski explains: “To overcome this, publishers are now running intrusive pop ups asking audiences to provide Personal Identifiable Information (PII) such as an email address, name and number, in exchange for content, and that can be straight away or after reaching a 1-2 article limit.”
This development has had some negative effects, says Kazanski: “As well as disrupting the user experience, this also means consumers’ PII is now stored in hundreds of locations and they have no control over it. While previously consumers could delete all of their browser’s cookies, it is impossible for them to retrace browsing activity and demand that the publishers that stored their login information, from subscriptions or registrations, delete any data they have on them. So ultimately, while data regulations were introduced to safeguard user privacy, they have instead given consumers less privacy as publishers try to continue monetizing their sites effectively.”
What would make for a better alternative? According to Kazanski: “A better approach to privacy would be to create truly anonymous identifiers for advertising purposes which would make it impossible to connect the anonymous browsing and interest data to PII. Other safeguards could include automatic expiration of identifiers after a certain time and the creation of a new identifier in its place, as well as prohibiting any collection and storage of certain interest data that could be considered sensitive, even if that data is connected to anonymous identifiers.”
There are other measures to consider too. Kazanski states: “Additionally, standardizing the identifiers, so that each browser only has one rather than hundreds of ad tech cookies and tens of thousands of website cookies, would make it easier for users to see what information is associated with their identifier – and they’d be able to edit or delete this information, giving them more control over how their data is used. It would also result in a better user experience with no disruptive pop ups asking for authentication and no PII data would be shared with publishers.”
