Tag: smartphone privacy

Consumers in the European country are less likely to trust ads that they feel will use their personal data.

According to the results of a recent survey conducted by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) France, consumers in that country feel suspicious of advertising they receive over their smartphones and tablets when it becomes intrusive or will utilize their personal information.

This survey involved the participation of more than 1,000 people with smartphones or tablets.

The research was conducted on behalf of the association by GfK. Among the respondents to the survey, about 60 percent said that they felt as though brands were being invasive on their smartphones or tablets as a result of too many spam like mobile marketing messages. Another 67 percent said that they were uncomfortable with the fact that they felt as though they were sharing information with brands, even without their knowledge. On top of that 68 percent expressed that they felt as though they were being spied on through their mobile devices.

The Mobile Marketing Association France said that it is vital for companies and brands to take care with privacy.

The MMA France said that the results of this survey show that it is very important that they take careful control over mobile advertising so that they will understand when consumers will find their actions to be relevant, and when they will find them to be intrusive or unwelcome.

Although 56 percent of the respondents to the survey feel that it shouldn’t be useful at all to have a company or a shop recognize them and while they haven’t any real interest in being personally welcomed when they enter a store’s physical location, it doesn’t stop there. Half of the respondents said that they did find it useful when stores use geolocation based marketing in order to provide them with discounts to the stores that they have just entered (or that they’re walking by at that moment).

This showed that it isn’t necessarily mobile marketing in general that is putting off French consumers, but it is the relevance that matters to them. Renaud Menerat, the president of MMA France explained that this research places the spotlight in the expectations that consumers have toward brands for understanding the notion of simplicity, service and transparency when it comes to their advertising overt his channel.

The think tank has raised considerable concerns regarding consumer safety and security.

In 2012, a geolocation privacy bill by Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, in order to provide the users of smartphones with a greater degree of control over the way that their data is controlled.

However, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation feels this legislation is problematic.

The law that was proposed would make it necessary for app developers to require users to specifically opt in to programs that would allow for the collection or disclosure of geolocation data. It would no longer be permitted for apps to automatically select that option, so that users would need to actively opt out if they did not wish to share their information in that way.

The geolocation data was not being protected by the companies that collected it, said Franken.

According to the senator, the “Companies that collect our location information are not protecting it the way they should.” At that time, he made reference to a number of errors and blunders regarding privacy, which had drawn considerable media attention. This included reports that Android and iPhone devices were sending the geolocation data of their users to Google and Apple.

Not to mention the CarrierIQ fiasco. That company was a part of a high profile discovery in 2011, when the researcher demonstrated that its software was capable of logging the keystrokes that were made on smartphones.

While it is Franken’s intention to reintroduce the geolocation privacy bill in 2013, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a think tank, is openly arguing that this proposed law may not encourage positive changes. In fact, it called the legislation “particularly problematic for apps that are supported by location-based advertising.”

It explained that the bill, which was designed to protect a user’s privacy in the face of geolocation technology and use, would require a user to have to give consent every time the app intends to work with a new ad network. This, they say, would generate awkward consumer notices. The think tank’s behaviors in the past have not indicated that they are adverse to advertising techniques such as pop-ups, which they recently used to state that they were rejecting do-not-track requests.