Digital Rights Advocates Take Aim At Mobile Marketing; FTC Filings Seek Curbs On Gathering User Data

This could actually be read as a sign that mobile advertising market is starting to come into its own? two consumer advocacy groups, the Center for Digital Democracy and U.S. Public Interest Research Group, have filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission asking regulators to actively curb the use of behavioral targeting by requiring users' specific consent before their personal information and mobile web activity is recorded for ad profiling.

The joint filing by CDD and USPIRG is modeled on the two group's Nov. 2006 FTC filing asking that officials investigate alleged privacy violations by online advertising companies. CDD executive director,Jeff Chester said the FTC "dropped the ball" when it elected to let the online ad industry police itself and that mobile-web advertising is still in a more "fluid period," which could allow consumer groups to exercise more influence.

In particular, the groups are taking aim at technologies like Enpocket's "Personalization Engine," which claims to predict mobile web users' likely purchase decisions based on the the sites they visit. The CDD and USPIRG also want the FTC to examine the use of text-message based marketing, especially in the case of teens and tweens. Release

Meanwhile, a U.S. Federal Trade Commission hearing on Tuesday has heard of the difficulty in controlling mobile spam, and the necessity of international cooperation reports Red Herring. The Florida AG explained that it "initially" targeted carriers because they get the lion's share of the revenues from inappropriate shortcode uses. "But we have also looked at the aggregators, billing aggregators, and advertising networks," he said. "But you need to deal with the people closest to the subscribers and the carriers are the ones that bill for this." The affiliates could be "19-year-old kids in a garage in Paducah" said the AG, adding that "you need to sue people that your resources can best impact the problem".

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