Twitter introduces cookie-based targeted advertising

Twitter users will now see targeted advertisements based on their internet-browsing history, following updates to the microblogging site's services for advertisers.
Through cookies stored on users' machines by the websites they visit, Twitter will now be able to use more data to display relevant adverts to its users. It also claims this will save its advertisers money by only showing their adverts to those who are likely to be interested. According to Twitter, firms such as Digitas have already used the platform and have been happy with the results.

The industry's biggest online advertisers have used cookie-based advertising for a long time, and it can be very lucrative. But many privacy bodies and watchdogs have become concerned about how websites use cookies, and that many internet surfers don't fully understand how they are being used. In 2012 the UK's Information Commissioner's Office set regulations requiring all websites using cookies to display a prominent notice explaining exactly how cookies would be used and how they would affect the browsing experience.

Twitter, however, says it has taken this into account and gives its members multiple ways of opting out. Users who have enabled the "do not track" function in their web browser, and those who edit their Twitter privacy settings, will not be targeted. It is an opt-out process, though.

Twitter became a publicly traded company in November, successfully launching onto the New York Stock Exchange, initially valued at more than $30bn. While the firm is a significant loss maker, investors were pleased to see Twitter received much of its revenue from mobile advertising and by the fact that the firm has room for expansion into more targeted advertising, including cookie-based and location-based ads.

At the end of November, Twitter launched its self-service advertising platform in the UK, allowing smaller businesses to more easily handle their campaigns. This was a step towards serving highly lucrative local advertisements, highlighting how much room for manoeuvre the company has in the advertising space.

Android app developer slammed by FTC for deceitful data gathering

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has rebuked an Android app developer for collecting and sharing information on users’ locations and device ID data, regardless of whether they had given their consent or not.
The incident underlines the risks posed by Android from a security point of view as apps are not vetted before they're made available on the Google Play store and can be used by their creators to spread malware or for other harmful means.

GoldenShores Technologies, makers of the Brightest Flashlight app, which the FTC said has been downloaded “millions of times”, were found to have passed on the data they gathered to third-party advertising networks.

Users were presented with an option about whether to share information but this had no effect whatsoever. Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, criticised the owner of the app Erik Geidl for playing fast and loose with users' privacy.

“When consumers are given a real, informed choice, they can decide for themselves whether the benefit of a service is worth the information they must share to use it,” she said. “But this flashlight app left them in the dark about how their information was going to be used.”

As a result of the undertaking signed by the firm to settle the case with the FTC it has agreed to stop "misrepresenting how consumers’ information is collected and shared and how much control consumers have over the way their information is used".

The settlement also requires the defendants to provide a disclosure that fully informs consumers "when, how and why their geolocation information is being collected, used and shared" and explicit permission for data collection must be secured as well.