Here in the United States, we tend to get a lot of junk mail in our physical mailboxes, and even if you opt-out (yes you can do that) some things will still make it through. So imagine my surprise when I received a letter last week from Google and Gallup about this new study they wanted to run. I was even more surprised a week later when they followed the original invite up with a postcard, because I hadn’t yet signed up yet. So I opened the letter to find out what this study was about (letter below, I have removed my personal information).
Ok, so the study wants me to help them develop new privacy centric advertising solutions. Ironic that it would come to me. I am clearly not the intended audience. Not the best sales pitch, but let’s set that aside. They did offer up to $130 USD per year for taking part, so I guess that’s something – but what really are they asking? I read on and reviewed the FAQ on the next page (below).
Ok so they claim my data won’t be shared with advertisers, curious – let’s see they want me to do to enroll a device. Let’s start with a Desktop Machine running Chrome.
Well that’s pretty clear – but we’ll skip that for now because I am not doing that. Let’s see what they would say for a mobile device.
The mobile directions are extensive (and in this case the user of this device the screenshots are from has Chrome as the default browser). If you’re interested, I have uploaded the entire file of the directions for review. In short, the directions encourage iPhone users to disable Intelligent Tracking Prevention when running Chrome (in effect turning off a wide array of privacy protections) as well as enable Google’s Ads Personalization.
I would think that the above directions would adjust depending on the browser and operating system detected. Now to be fair, in both cases they do warn that enabling these features may allow other websites to monitor my activity. Still, I am extremely skeptical that most people will understand fully what that means. I do understand, so no, I don’t think I’ll be doing that.
I can appreciate Google’s desire to develop replacement technology for their advertising business, but I feel here they are dramatically understating the possible impact to a user’s privacy. Even if Google swears that they won’t use the data, or make it available to others – enabling Google to collect the data also offers methods for every other tracking technology solution on a website to also collect data and follow the user around the internet because in effect Google is requesting that the user disable privacy protections, which has the effect of enabling third party cookies.
I don’t feel the promised $50 in gift cards on sign up, or the maximum $130 in gift cards possible is a worthwhile trade off, but I am concerned many people will do it not fully realizing what they are doing or the level of access to tracking they are giving every MarTech vendor and website on the internet by opting into this study. Nothing in the letter or the pages really explains the risks for disabling these privacy features, and as a result I really don’t believe that the average user would be able to make a informed choice. Still, it’s interesting they believe that accepting the risk is worth up to $130.. in gift cards.