Partner Article

Seeking a better performance marketing world

In a whistle blowing, to rival The Pentagon Papers, both international governments and tech companies are currently in crisis, following Edward Snowden’s leaking of Prism - the US National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

Data itself is ethically neutral, but in past posts I have regularly raised and discussed questions of identity, privacy, ownership and international regulations. Now the ‘detonation’ of Prism in the press, has once again exploded ethical questions into the public consciousness about the security:privacy ratio balance.

Technologies have vastly increased the speed and quantity of data that can be harvested now and this has implications for those in performance marketing who handle it. In a recent Performance In article, our CEO David J. Brown alerted readers to players who flout regulations and laws, and in doing so “are damaging the industry that so many of us try to professionalise.” In the interests of protecting this industry, Ve has always chosen to blow the whistle on discrepancies in the values that some companies publish, compared to what they actually practice.

So as the shockwave of Prism moves through the media, the moral has to be that, whilst people hand over their personal data in exchange for the convenience of interacting online, it is vital that any data handling company gives their clients the confidence that they operate within a frame work of accountability and legality.

Ask yourself, does your third-party provider have the right checks and balances in place? Or better still, ask them.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Kathy Heslop .