ICANN Can’t Shut Spamhaus Down
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will not comply with a proposed order by an Illinois judge to shut down U.K.-based anti-spam website Spamhaus.
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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will not comply with a proposed order by an Illinois judge to shut down U.K.-based anti-spam website Spamhaus.
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Cingular Wireless has filed suit in a federal court against three companies yesterday to stop telemarketers from making unsolicited and illegal calls to Cingular customers.
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Chase is planning a large-scale addressable TV advertising buy for early next year, making it the first major marketer to deliver unique TV advertising at the household address level. What makes this campaign unique is that it’s not zip-code or neighborhood level targeting - Chase will deliver unique TV advertising to each household served.
Marketers dismayed by last year’s studies that found consumers detested and deleted cookies have cause for cheer in that a new study has found only 8 percent of consumers “very frequently” delete cookies (vs. 18 percent in a previous, 2004 study), reports ClickZ (via MarketingVOX), citing a survey sponsored by Revenue Science and conducted by the Ponemon Institute. Other studies last year had put the proportion of at least monthly cookie deleters at 39-55 percent.
According to the new Ponemon study, 24 percent of respondents also said they never delete cookies, more than double the 11 percent in the previous study.
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Playboy magazine’s website plans to publish a photo spread of “Girls from MySpace,” featuring women from the social and blogging site, according to Mediapost. While Playboy has often tapped into pop culture for photo spread features - having published in the past photo spreads on Enron, Starbucks, and the Ivy League - the move is not necessarily a happy one for MySpace.
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Six leading advertising associations and civil rights watchdog groups have applied to file an amicus brief in a lawsuit challenging Utah’s “Do Not E-mail” registry and say in their application that the case is important “to all parties with a vested interest in free and unfettered availability of email as a communications channel,” MediaPost reports (via MarketingVox). The lawsuit was filed in November by The Free Speech Coalition, an adult-entertainment trade organization that wants Utah’s Child Protection Registry Act invalidated.
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The planned rollout of a radio-frequency ID system to track promotional displays in 5,000 Walgreens stores is raising objections from privacy groups that worry about future consumer tracking, AdAge reports.
The system, created by Goliath Solutions, uses RFID to track when, how long and where displays are placed in stores, allowing marketers to track results of promotions by store or demographic cluster. Manufacturers can also time local, regional or national advertising according to when displays are in place and send representatives to stores that haven’t put up displays.
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Data provider ChoicePoint Inc. has notified another 17,000 consumers that some requests for names, Social Security numbers, and other information filled by ChoicePoint may have been fraudulent, reports DM News. The notices were sent in September, according to ChoicePoint’s quarterly report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and were sent as a result of an October 2004 discovery that bogus accounts were posing as legitimate businesses.
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Microsoft, typically opposed to national privacy laws, seems to have thrown in with Ebay and Hewlett-Packard in supporting national legislation, AdAge reports. At a congressional luncheon yesterday, Microsoft’s senior vp-general counsel and corporate secretary Brad Smith cited growing worries about fading consumer trust in the internet and difficulties in complying with conflicting state legislation as reasons for the government to adopt privacy legislation.
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Because of perceived threats online, including identity theft, internet users are becoming less trustful of websites and have therefore reduced their online time (30 percent of respondents) as well as stopped shopping online (25 percent of respondents), according to a survey by Consumer Reports WebWatch released Wednesday, reports Agence France Presse (via MarketingVox). Eighty-eight percent of respondents said keeping personal information safe and secure is very important; 80 percent said they were at least “somewhat concerned” about identity theft.
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Over 100 groups led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center have written to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to demand that the U.S. military stop developing a database of personal information about U.S. teens, AdAge reports. The database, launched in 2002, when Congress combined some individual military service recruiting functions, is apparently meant for marketing purposes for recruiting, but the letter warns that it could lead to broader government tracking of personal information.
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As the holiday shopping season approaches, a Burst Media survey reports (via MarketingVox) that three-quarters (76.6 percent) of respondents - web users age 18 and older - say they are also online shoppers; three out of five (62.8 percent) of such shoppers also say the internet is their primary source of information when evaluating and comparing products.
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B-to-B list provider DM2 has announced that it will offer a bi-monthly webcast series designed to offer information and insight for marketers to help them make direct marketing and email marketing decisions, reports B to B. The first webcast, scheduled for August 30, will address email security issues, and will include a client-side marketer, National Instruments, plus Denise Moser, privacy director for DM2 parent company Reed Business Information.
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Consumers are apparently becoming more touchy about their online privacy, with just 32 percent - down from 41 percent in 2004 - willing to allow websites to track their online behavior in return for receiving personalized content, according to research from personalization technology firm ChoiceStream, MediaPost reports (via MarketingVox). Moreover, 46 percent said they would provide demographic data in exchange for personalized content, compared with 57 percent last year; and 59 percent said they would provide information about their preferences in order to receive individualized content, down from 65 percent in 2004.
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MKTG Services outlined a five-step plan to ensure that members of the list industry are being proactive when it comes to taking on privacy issues at yesterday’s Direct Marketing Association List Vision 2005 conference, according to DM News.
“Our CEO saw the ChoicePoint news and said he didn’t want to be on the cover of The New York Times,” said Stacey Girt, senior VP of MKTG Services, referring to the data breach that began a year of publicity surrounding similar breaches and resulting in several proposed state and federal legislation.
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Nokia is launching a Bluetooth marketing campaign in the UK to promote its 6680 handset - joining the growing list of big brands like Volvo and EMI that have experimented with Bluetooth marketing - but some lawyers, trade bodies and agencies have expressed concerns that brands running these campaigns are in breach of privacy regulations, New Media Age reports(via Adverblog).
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According to eMarketer’s just-released “The Cookie Report,” (via MarketingVox) web advertisers and publishers must convince internet users of the benefits of cookies, which vast numbers of users are reported to regularly delete; unless consumers are convinced not to do so, the online ad industry could face major problems, according to the report. Consumers should come to understand that “cookies are harmless, that they don’t violate privacy and that they are not a type of spyware.”
“A key promise of online advertising has always been its greater accountability, because it’s more readily measured,” says eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman. “Since that measurement often relies on cookies, online marketers have a problem - a big problem.”
