Speeches

For decades, children have been big business--the source for buying toys, games, clothes and now lots of high-tech goodies.  Marketers have tried to treat kids as young adults--unleashing an array of ad campaigns designed to get them to buy or "pester" their parents.  Media companies and marketers, for the most part, have opposed regulatory safeguards that would protect young people from such unfettered advertising (kids TV is a great example).  It comes as no surprise to anyone that one reason media and marketing companies want unfettered access to influence kids,

Last August,  a coalition of child health, consumer and privacy groups asked the FTC to investigate the use of so-called "Refer-A-Friend" viral branded marketing tactics designed to encourage kids to provided the email addresses of their friends--a violation we believe of the children's online privacy law--COPPA.  The idea that leading companies would work to bypass--and undermine--parental role is disturbing.  Among the companies engaging in those practices explained the complaint included McDonald's, General Mills, Subway, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.&

When Google changed its privacy policy last year--integrating more than 60 separate policies into one giant `we can collect everything' statement--EU officals and many US privacy advocates argued that the company was actually weakening what little protections  users had when dealing with the online ad giant.  CDD asked the FTC to investigate Google's approach as "unfair and deceptive," since it was offered as a privacy enhancing approach--but its real goal, of course, was to enable Google to assemb

When does a really big rationalization of a really big lie become reality?  That's one of the questions the public should be asking the US online ad and data collection lobby.  Over the last few weeks, in either a odd expression of denial or demonstrating incredible digital "chutzpah," the Digital Ad Alliance (basically representing every big company online and off) has claimed that: