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With the Facebook crisis in full flame, we wonder if this could be a turning point for privacy, or certainly a moment of reflection about what the role of marketing is in this debate. Marketers have certainly been dazzled by the potential of big data for targeting and personalization, but maybe they need to exercise more caution – or at least be more aware of the need for better privacy controls. Paul and David bat around a few thoughts about the changing nature of privacy and what the revelations of  the past week mean for marketers.

Reactions to the Facebook disclosures have been almost unanimously negative. The Internet Society posted an op/ed saying that “Mark Zuckerberg’s apology is a first step, but it’s not enough.” Certainly, many businesses (SpaceX and Tesla are two corporate examples) are deleting their Facebook pages, but do they really understand that this data persists for quite some time? The EFF has this handy guide for individual privacy, and we suspect that some corporate users will also get smarter about how their data is consumed by social platforms of the future.  Hopefully, some solid regulation will come of this movement, and a better appreciation of our customers’ privacy too. 

On a related note, in the worst-timed news we’ve seen in a long time, Slack has changed its privacy policy to permit account owners to download entire workspaces, purportedly to enable these conversations to be recorded for posterity. We knew that our expectations around workplace privacy were low, but our IM chats too? 

There’s also a new academic study on web tracking tools that shows that the threat of misbehaving third-party applications trampling on private data is huge. Thousands of these tracking tools are used by online advertisers, and many are good at evading ad blockers. 

The notion of privacy by design has been around for more than a decade; perhaps marketers should take a moment to review some of its precepts.

About David Strom

David Strom is a former editor-in-chief of Network Computing and Tom's Hardware who has written two computer networking books and thousands of articles about B2B IT.

About Paul Gillin

Paul Gillin, host of FIR B2B, is a veteran technology journalist and a thought leader in new media. Since 2005, he has advised marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize their use of social media and online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. Full bio