The bottom line of online marketing is missing

At the recent 2012 China Internet Conference, some internet marketing companies spoke at the forum about how accurately their advertising campaigns based on big data mining are based. It seems that nobody cares whether these practices will infringe on the privacy of users.

Four or five years ago, a friend of a public relations firm asked me to help promote a company’s innovative business—collecting all sorts of user information through various channels, including the behavioral habits of users on the Internet, in order to help advertisers perform more accurate advertising. . Of course, if the customer needs, they can also provide customers with these processed effective user data.

After listening to his introduction, I could not help wondering. Does this not infringe on the privacy of users? Are they doing so legally?

For ordinary users, they may not know whether the Internet is behind people or dogs, but for these Internet marketing companies, they can not only know exactly what the dog is, but also know what the dog loves to eat. At present, it is the era of mobile Internet, and more and more users use mobile phones to access the Internet. The user's online behavior is tied with the mobile number, which will allow these internet marketing companies to discover more of the user's private information. Imagine how scary it would be if someone could know everything you did through the various smart terminals you use!

Although telecom operators also hold all the calls and SMS records of each mobile phone user, the status of the central enterprises does not allow them to make indiscriminate acts of infringing user privacy. But can I believe in other commercial companies? Not long ago, it was revealed by CCTV. Luo Weideng B&B, who was later investigated and dealt with by the industry and commerce authorities, did not violate the law because of the resiliency of user data?

Although our country’s laws have already stipulated that “the right to privacy of citizens” should be “protected”, it is still necessary to discuss how to implement the Internet. Whether the information of users' access to the Internet is personal privacy and whether the website can collect, organize, analyze, and get users more online behavior information? Can an enterprise use this information to provide services for other companies? Can it sell such user information? At present these are still a confused account.

At a closed meeting of the 2012 China Internet Conference, Gao Xinmin, deputy chairman of the China Internet Association, suggested that industry associations should play a role unless there are clear regulations on this. While not restricting the normal development of enterprises, it is absolutely impossible to draw a red line and define what actions are illegal.

With the rapid development of the Internet, it is difficult for laws and regulations to timely regulate these emerging new things. Under this circumstance, industry associations should indeed play a greater role, and regulate more details based on existing Internet industry self-regulation conventions. Behavior to make it more operational.

Of course, it is not just internet marketing that requires regulation. From early 3Q wars to recent e-commerce price wars and 3BS search wars, these Internet companies are only thinking about how to fight their opponents without taking into account the interests of users. Such unconstrained behavior should have ceased long ago.