Improving Privacy Protection in the Area of Behavioural Targeting

Behavioural targeting, or online profiling, is at the core of many privacy problems on the Internet. Behavioural targeting involves monitoring people’s online behaviour and using the data obtained to expose people to individually targeted advertisements.

In the process, firms gather information, store it, analyse it, and disclose it to other firms. Firms compile detailed profiles, based on what internet users read, what videos they watch, what they search for, etc. People have little control over what happens to information concerning them.

There is wide agreement that EU data protection law – and similar regimes in countries worldwide – offers insufficient protection of privacy on the internet. This publication examines how the law could improve online privacy protection, and is among the first legal studies to discuss the implications of behavioural sciences for privacy law.

A detailed analysis is presented of the problematic role of informed consent in data protection law, emphasizing the tension in the law between protecting and empowering the individual. Among the topics covered are the following:-

• the privacy implications of behavioural targeting;
• the data protection rules that apply to behavioural targeting
• the scope of the personal data definition
• the role of informed consent in data protection law;
• the policy implications of insights from behavioural studies;
• the drawbacks of using informed consent as a privacy protection measure.

Given the limited potential of informed consent as a privacy protection measure, the publication argues that policymakers can improve legal privacy protection by focusing less on empowering people and more on protecting people.

Practitioners, businesspersons, policymakers, and regulators will find much here to help them develop a more cogent, socially responsible, and reasonable approach to privacy law and policy – not only in Europe but anywhere in the world.