WPP's unleashes "world's largest database" with "over 500 million" user profiles-and they claim it protects privacy!

The digital data collection arms race, embodied by the dramatic growth of ad exchanges (and the real-time auctioning off of consumers without their knowledge or consent), now has generated WPP's new Xaxis data targeting platform.   As Adweek reports, " Xaxis, a unit that will manage the "world’s largest" database of individuals’ profiles—including demographic, financial, purchase, geographic, and other information that’s been collected from peoples’ Web activities and physical transactions. This information will be used to create personalized ads for the Internet, mobile, and, eventually, TV.  According to WPP executives, Xaxis will have access to over 500 million profiles, reaching nearly 100 percent of the population in markets where it operates. Xaxis will build up this database by tracking consumers via ads and marketers' websites, as well as by tapping existing customer databases and buying information from outside firms."
Incredibly, WPP is reported as claiming that "all of the information it collects is anonymous, plus any ads using the data will include a special privacy icon that tells consumers that they are being targeted and allows them to opt out."  Since WPP is targeting 11 countries with its monster digital profiling and targeting apparatus, it should set the stage for privacy officials from across the world to colloborate and investigate its data collection practices.  WPP isn't alone, of course.  Its partner Google runs the Doubleclick exchange (and wants to buy Admeld); Microsoft is expanding its ad exchange service in the EU.   There are others.  But regulators and privacy and consumer advocates should challenge this disengenuous claim that data profiling warehouses and user exchange sales systems are privacy friendly.  Like the tobacco industry, it's time to ask data technology and ad executives to tell the real truth.