Online Users Have Little Privacy Control With Advertisers, Norway DPA Report Says
There's an imbalance of power between companies such as Facebook and Google that are amassing vast amounts of information about online users, and individuals who have few opportunities to "exercise their fundamental right to privacy," said the English-language version of…
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a report released Friday by Datatilsynet, Norway's data protection authority. "The information asymmetry that characterises the market is a form of market failure," it said. "When consumers have no knowledge about what is going on, they cannot demand services that offer better privacy. The uneven distribution of information results in a competitive situation, which encourages the market players to use methods increasingly invasive of privacy." The DPA said individuals don't just deal with a company that owns a website they visit, but also "ad exchanges, demand side and supply side platforms, ad networks, data brokers and data management platforms." Datatilsynet said it's working to increase transparency in the ad market and recommended website publishers provide information about third parties that collect user data such as type and usage, giving individuals the option to provide "active consent" to companies collecting their data, and improving privacy policies so they are easy to understand.