<p>In a classic comedy sketch from the television show "Laugh In," which aired between 1967 and 1973, actress Lily Tomlin portrays a phone operator attempting to receive payment from a Mr. Veedul for three calls placed to Topeka, Kan.</p><p>Veedul refuses, to Tomlin's surprise. After all, according to his banking account, he isn't short on funds. But Veedul is shocked that a phone operator has access to such privileged information.</p><p>"Privileged information? Oh Mr. Veedul, that's so cute," the operator says before a snort-inducing laugh. "No, no Mr. Veedul, you're dealing with the telephone company ... Now, Mr. Veedul, I want you to understand something. We are not subject to city, state or federal regulations. </p><p>"We are omnipotent."</p><p>Some 40 years later, the phone company may no longer be omnipotent, but Google and Facebook sure seem to be. To their credit, the companies have worked to become more transparent in the way they handle users' private information. However, as they work to get better, these companies still find themselves at the heart of privacy controversies, leaving consumers unsure of what to believe. </p><p>Google in particular has become a fixture of controversial headlines recently. Just a few weeks ago, the company came under fire for placing its social network Google+ at or near the top of search results, above results that were many times more relevant from the more popular sites Twitter and Facebook.</p><p>Then it was discovered that Google was bypassing privacy settings in the Safari and Internet Explorer browsers to plant cookies, bits of code that track Web browsing habits. Some of those cookies weren't even for Google. They were planted by Google on behalf of companies that pay it for advertising.</p><p>Most recently, Google changed its privacy policy, allowing it to spread, across all of its services, the sometimes staggering amount of data it has collected on its users.</p><p>That's important for Google because the company makes the bulk of its money by selling ad space around its search results, mobile apps, Gmail service and more.</p><p>This is hugely significant to the advertising industry. And, according to David Mothersbaugh, a University of Alabama marketing professor, these are very uncertain times for online advertisers. As people become better educated about the way the Internet works, they worry about online entities using their personal information for shady marketing purposes.</p><p>What's interesting, especially to advertisers, is that they continue to provide it on a daily basis anyway.</p><p>Privacy paradox</p><p>The advertising industry has begun referring to this as the "privacy paradox," Mothersbaugh said.</p><p>For instance, many cringe when a website asks to begin sending them marketing emails and updates. But those same people could be fine with listing their address, phone number, interests, favorite books, movies and music on Facebook, even though their Facebook friends are not the only ones benefiting from that information.</p><p>Marcus Brown, an associate professor in UA's computer science department, said Facebook and the advertisers that pay the social network for ad space are benefiting from that data more than anyone.</p><p>Which is exactly why Google has been trying, some would say desperately, to establish its own foothold in social media. </p><p>Google can help its advertisers target users by logging their search and browsing history, as it does now. But Google could target consumers even better if it can convince them to use Google+ and provide the site with all the juicy demographic and personal information they would normally provide Facebook.</p><p>A call for change</p><p>But it's not as if social media is seen as a haven for privacy. After countless news stories over questions regarding Facebook's privacy settings and practices, users are becoming more guarded about publishing personal details to social media.</p><p>That trend is actually a good indicator of findings by Mothersbaugh and two other researchers, one from Troy University's Montgomery Campus and another from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.</p><p>According to a paper by the team that was published in the Journal of Service Research, three factors are thought to have a major influence on consumers when deciding whether to provide online entities with personal information.</p><p>Those factors are online privacy concerns, perceived control over how personal information is used by these companies and flexibility offered by a website to be customized according to a user's needs or preferences.</p><p>These factors have been heavily researched, but, according to the paper, 40 percent of these studies found that they had no or mixed effects on online disclosure of personal information.</p><p>Mothersbaugh and his team found this odd since national polls have found that a majority of consumers hesitate to provide information online because of concerns over these factors, particularly their control over personal information once it has been provided.</p><p>The paper contends that this difference is because prior research did not factor in the sensitivity of the information consumers are being asked to provide.</p><p>So Mothersbaugh and his team performed a study that presented 716 participants with a TV listings website that would gauge their willingness to provide personal information of varying sensitivity.</p><p>In the end, the findings suggest that, rather than facing a privacy paradox, marketers must simply understand that consumers are more willing to provide less sensitive personal information online, like media and brand preferences, than more sensitive information like their home addresses, phone numbers and banking information.</p><p>The study also found that allowing users to customize the website and giving them more control over how their personal information is used did calm privacy concerns. In addition, the researchers suggested that online entities become more transparent and communicate to their customers in a clearer way exactly who sees their personal information and exactly what it is being used for.</p><p>"A lot of the time consumers don't even read privacy statements," Mothersbaugh said. "Sometimes those can be pretty daunting. Pages and pages of legalese.</p><p>"These companies need to make it not only accurate but also something that's easier to understand."</p><p>But Mothersbaugh and his team aren't the only ones calling for more transparency from online advertisers. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission released voluntary guidelines suggesting that companies need to be more proactive with respect to privacy protection online.</p><p>In addition to calling for more transparency, the guidelines call for privacy to be a top priority for these companies when designing their online presence.</p><p>The guidelines also call for what Mothersbaugh called simplified choice. </p><p>"When a choice is necessary, it ought to be clear to consumers what their choices are and easy for them to enact those choices," he said.</p><p>Mothersbaugh said Google's new privacy policy actually does well in adhering to these guidelines. He noted that in addition to giving users more ways to customize what Google knows about them, the company has made everything it already knows about them readily available at google.com/dashboard.</p><p>"For instance, the idea of an opt-in and opt-out for cookies," he said. "If you look at Google's new privacy statement, it says that you may also choose to block all cookies." </p><p>Convenience paradox</p><p>And while consumers certainly should keep privacy in mind as they surf the Web, in this increasingly digital age, as they disable things like cookies, it becomes harder for the brands and companies they trust to serve them better, Mothersbaugh and Brown said.</p><p>Part of Google's defense when it was discovered that the company was bypassing privacy settings is that the settings were too stringent. They kept Google from providing services its customers had requested.</p><p>"They note that if you or something else disables those cookies, they may not be able to serve you as well," Mothersbaugh said.</p><p>That may be, but some users of these browsers still have grounds for complaint, Brown said. Google still bypassed a setting meant to protect users from unwanted tracking.</p><p>Brown said that more times than not, a programming controversy like this boils down to problem solving. Google encountered a problem preventing it from operating in the way it wanted to, so it set out to solve that problem.</p><p>"In one sense, that's the nature of programming in a lot of different ways. Computer science is problem solving with computers," he said.</p><p>At that point it becomes an ethical debate on who is right, Brown said. Is Google correct for wanting to serve its users more efficiently, or are Microsoft and Apple correct for setting up a preemptive shield for their users?</p><p>"On one hand, a user may want that convenience that cookies provide like not having to enter a user name and password each time you want to log onto a site," he said.</p><p>"On the other hand, if I feel like a company is going out of its way to collect information on me, I feel intruded upon."</p><p>For a lot of the general public, Brown said, the Internet is still a new and unfamiliar place. Because of that, users can be exploited and when they are it makes big headlines, which, in turn, can cause people to panic.</p><p>Brown said that while those that aggressively snatch private information are definitely in the wrong, the public needs to remember that in many controversies over privacy, the original problem is an honest mistake.</p><p>"The idea of writing consumer software is relatively new. Maybe 25 or 30 years old," he said. "There's a quote by a computer scientist that goes 'Programming a computer is maybe the hardest thing we've asked the human brain to do.'</p><p>"Many times when you get into the problem of designing software, the problem and the possible solutions can swamp your cognitive resources. Many times you've got so much going on that it's hard to remember how a user is going to react to it.</p><p>"And when it comes to app developers, when you look through the iPhone's App Store, an awful lot of the time these apps were designed by one guy with a weekend to spare. He doesn't have the luxury of a team of user experience engineers or a lawyer."</p><p>"These are fallible human beings writing this software."</p><p>Far from perfect</p><p>With that in mind, Brown said consumers and programmers have work to do. Just as Mothersbaugh and the FTC are recommending, Brown said programmers must begin making privacy a top priority as they build.</p><p>Meanwhile, consumers should be careful while understanding that computer science is far from a perfected science.</p><p>"Be aware of what is happening online. Be aware that companies are using the information that you are giving them to sell ads," he said.</p><p>"But also be aware that these companies and programmers have no personal interest in you. All they're interested in is selling a product. It seems creepy sometimes, but typically there's no malice there."</p><p>"Does it cost you privacy at times? Yes, but not as much as we might worry."</p>
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