“Marketers. Ready, aim, engage! It is easier than ever to hit the right marketing targets,” explains Equifax about its far-reaching data capabilities that capture, analyze, and sell our information. Equifax’s admission last week about its loss of personal information on 143 million Americans—including Social Security and drivers license numbers—is also a wake-up call about the dramatic loss of our privacy in the digital era.

Deep Root Analytics, a leading media & audience analytics company that creates data platforms for audience targeting and ad monitoring, announced today that it has expanded the number of audiences available with D2 Media Sales to enable political, corporate & advocacy advertisers to target Dish and DIRECTV households using proprietary audience segments.

Personal health wearable devices that consumers are using to monitor their heart rates, sleep patterns, calories, and even stress levels raise new privacy and security risks, according to a report released today by researchers at American University and the Center for Digital Democracy.

Chart: Here’s How 5 Tech Giants Make Their Billions

The following can be attributed to Katharina Kopp, Policy Director, Center for Digital Democracy. 

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Today’s House vote to overturn the first major Internet privacy protection for Americans, may be a win for ISP monopolies, but it’s a tragic loss for our democracy. 

This report provides a snapshot of five categories of marketing tactics used by fast food, snack food, and soft drink companies to target children and adolescents. These categories include: 1) creating immersive environments; 2) infiltrating social networks; 3) location-based and mobile marketing; 4) collecting personal data; and 5) studying and triggering the subconscious. Descriptions of these categories along with examples from the food and beverage industry are provided.

This report describes and provides examples of the types of digital marketing research utilized by the food and beverage industry and the potential effects it has on the health of children and adolescents. Researchers found that food and beverage industry, together with the companies they contract, are conducting three major types of research: 1) testing and deploying new marketing platforms, 2) creating new research methods to probe consumers’ responses to marketing, and 3) developing new means to assess the impact of new digital research on marketers’ profits.

This letter was sent today to new FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez by three-dozen NGOs--including the national leaders in the consumer and privacy fields. 

Washington, DC: The Center for Digital Democracy, in comments filed today with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), urged the agency to significantly revise its proposed studies on the “Examination of Online Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Promotion.” Citing the wide variety of techniques that pharmaceutical and health marketers use to target consumers online, CDD called for a more informed analysis that reflects how U.S. health consumers are actually marketed to on social networks, mobile phones, and via the Web.