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News Corp, Nine, Seven Targeted Over Data Collection

A UNSW Law and Justice academic has highlighted what she believed to be consumer law breaches by Nine, Seven and News Corp.

Dr Katharine Kemp’s paper, How to Track Consumers Who Don’t Want to be Tracked, was presented at the ACCC’s National Consumer Congress.

It claims that the three top media companies have breached Australian Consumer Law by misusing the terms ‘anonymous’ and ‘de-identified’ when referring to consumer data it collected.

“News Corp has emphasised that it can distinguish 16 million individual users, recognisable through a particular unique and persistent identifier, even when the user is not logged in to any News Corp service,” Kemp wrote in the paper.

“According to the Act, personal information will be ‘de-identified if the information is no longer about an identifiable individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable’.

“It is therefore, at best, highly questionable that information connected to a unique identifier allocated to the same individual every time that individual uses a website or app, even without logging in, could be said to be de-identified.”

Kemp has called for the ACCC to investigate this potential breach. She points to the “stunning contrast” in the data practices laid out in privacy policies and how these media companies promote their audience targeting abilities to advertisers.

“The advertising press story is effectively ‘We’re the champion identity-farming uber-trackers, just like Google and Meta'”, Kemp explains.

“The privacy policies give consumers the ‘nothing to see here’ version of data practices. It’s a pretty stunning contrast.”

Although she doesn’t target Meta or Google, she blames their policies for the sea change in local behaviour.

“Two of the world’s largest digital platforms, Google and Meta, have gained some notoriety for their pervasive tracking of consumers’ activities and combination of data about consumers across a vast array of websites, apps and businesses, in aid of their highly profitable and powerful advertising businesses,” Kemp wrote.

“This has spurred a ‘race to the bottom’ in privacy quality as rival adtech providers vie for business in adtech services that support behavioural advertising, and competition on the basis of privacy protection goes unrewarded so long as those degrading privacy are able to conceal the nature, extent and consequences of their consumer data practices.”

All three of the targeted media companies have denied such a breach.

“We are disappointed that Dr Kemp’s paper does not fairly represent the terms of Nine’s privacy policy,” said a Nine spokesperson. “Nine is confident that our privacy policy and related practices would stand up to scrutiny.”

Seven West Media’s Chief Revenue Officer, Kurt Burnette, said the company takes a “privacy-first approach to identity and data management and respect and provide strong protections around user’s personal information.”

“While we can recognise a user as a discreet user, with a particular unique identifier, we do not know who they actually are,” claims a News Corp spokesperson.

“Our sites inform users, including those not logged in, about our data collection practices.”

Kemp hopes an investigation will see the entire industry shift its practices.

“It may be time to overcome last decade’s fixation on tracking, profiling and hyper targeting. Most consumers say they do not like it,” Kemp wrote.

“They are not just waiting to have the ‘value proposition’ explained to them more clearly. They do not want more of the prolific tracking and combining of datasets Google and Meta have become renowned for.”

 



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