Getting privacy right in a first-party data world
With continued advances in marketing technology, data privacy continues to play catch up in terms of regulation, safety and use. The laws that do exist are open to interpretation and potential misuse and that has led to consumer mistrust and increasing calls for a stronger regulatory framework to protect personal information.
The European Union developed consistent and general data protection regulations (GDPR) to ensure key areas of concern, such as consent, data protection, encryption, right of access and the right to be forgotten are protected. Australia on the other hand has lagged, with the privacy act of 1988 the last principal piece of legislation designed to protect the handling and potential dissemination of personal data.
Attempts have been made to bridge that gap since, but they didn’t do an adequate job, especially when it comes to everyone’s favourite punching bag – cookies. Laws are not matching the exponential advances in technology.
The digital marketing industry failed to address the growing confusion and concerns around what cookies, more specifically third-party cookies, were being used for (collating your private data such as name, address, and so on) versus what they are used for: Remembering your browsing patterns along with some personal info such as age, gender, behaviour for personalised marketing and analytics purposes.
