Segregation of data protection duties

Business Week recently published a profile of Usama Fayyad, the chief data officer of Yahoo!. In this profile they highlight that his responsibilities are:

1. "...make both sense and money from the vast amounts of information Yahoo collects on the doings of 500 million people who visit its site every month."
2. "Fayyad... [is] engaged in a major battle over how freely that information can be used to tailor ads to individuals."

These goals are almost diametrically opposed. I searched for a chief privacy officer for Yahoo! as well, but did not find any references to one. While I am sure that Mr. Fayyad very competent and wants to strike the right balance, Yahoo! has opened themselves up to additional business risks by placing the duty to protect information, and make money from it in the same person. Much like our legal system, data protection and data usage need two different people on opposing sides in order to effectively bring the issues to light and find the right balance. That is why these two duties should be separated, and why it is important to have a chief privacy officer. There are already many other people on the opposite side of the issue, like the heads of business or marketing officers. Even still, it may not be a fair competition, but at least someone will be standing up for the consumer trying prevent privacy violations.

Comments

[Adrian Lane]

I am not certain there is a legitimate call for a Champion of Privacy at Yahoo, as the suggestion implies that they have failed in some way. I have not seen such evidence. Google on the other hand seems a little over the line to me. If you have read their privacy policy it's, statements like "We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services." This shows me that they are not struggling with the question of how freely they can use the data. They use it aggressively.
Ironic that I was just having a discussion with co-workers last week on how a couple people feel that the Google Ads are being targeted at them by information in their Gmail, and have switched away because of the degree of targeting that is going on. Send a few emails on your favorite sports team, and watch how they pop up in the ads.

You may be right about Yahoo! needing a privacy officer to help the cause, but if I am going to select a company that needs to have more discussions about reigning in the use of information, Yahoo! would not be first on my list.

[Jen Albornoz Mulligan]

Thank you for your comment Adrian,

I agree with you that Google has taken a liberal stance with regard to their use of user data. But I have repeatedly posted on this blog about their policies, and so I did not want to beat the dead horse too much. Personally, I find that I don't even notice the ads on the side of my gmail account. I wonder if they are more effective for other demographics.

My concern about Yahoo! is that if they are looking to compete with Google in the marketplace they will need to develop new and innovative marketing tactics, often using user information. Otherwise they will be playing catch-up. It is important to ensure that both sides of the proposal are considered, as not all consumers are equally sensitive to privacy invasions. Facebook has felt this pain recently with their Beacon system. Every organization that relies on using customer information to make money should have a representative for a privacy-sensitive customer so they can take reasonable business risks.