Telecoms shouldn’t track customer habits for marketing: PIAC

To permit BCE Inc. to collect customers’ personal information and track their activities for marketing and advertising purposes “allows Bell to change the nature of what a telecom-service provider is paid to do,” said a lawyer who’s filed an application with the CRTC challenging this practice. “They’re moving away from neutrally passing a message to also being in the business of advertising and marketing,” Geoffrey White, lawyer with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), said in a phone interview. White said that shift conflicts with the Telecommunications Act and CRTC regulations, which is part of the reason why PIAC and the Consumers’ Association of Canada filed an application Monday against Bell’s practice of tracking customers’ information and habits for the purpose of targeted advertising. The rules White said are being broken were “designed to ensure that the telecom provider just passes the message rather than profits off what’s in the message or who’s using the message or how they’re using it,” he said. In the application, PIAC and the consumers’ group said Bell’s using of customer information for targeted advertising is “overstepping its role” as a telecommunications provider and should be shut down before it establishes a “dangerous precedent.” In an email response sent Tuesday morning, Bell spokeswoman Jacqueline Michelis said: “Bell is committed to protecting the privacy of our customers. We do not share specific customer data with advertisers or any other outside party. The relevant advertising program is fully compliant with federal privacy guidelines, the Telecommunications Act and all applicable CRTC regulations. Customers can opt out at any time.” Bell’s notice of the initiative in question, which it posted on its online privacy disclosure page on Oct. 22, said it would start tracking subscribers’ information on Nov. 16 “to improve network performance and product offers through new business and marketing reports,” and to sell targeted ads. Some of the information it said would be tracked included customers’ age range, sex, websites accessed, locations, usage of devices and applications, TV viewing and calling patterns. It said that “under these new programs, we will not share any information that identifies you personally outside of Bell Canada and its affiliates.” The application made to the CRTC by PIAC and the consumers’ association said: “The Bell Notice, and the program, appears to relate only to Bell Mobility subscribers, however Bell has indicated that it intends to expand the program to TV and Internet customers ‘in the future.’ ” The application also involves Bell Aliant Inc. (which BCE has a 44 per cent stake in) and its affiliates. White said they were included because “we want all of Bell and Bell’s affiliates at the table.” A day after Bell’s notice went up, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said it would investigate its program after receiving complaints about it. White said Bell has an “unmatched level of access to info about Canadians” through its various businesses, including home phone, Internet, television, and wireless, as well as its retail operation The Source. He added: “Bell hasn’t been entirely forthcoming in terms of what Bell will be doing, in terms of how they will be tracking information, how they will be using it, how they will be disclosing it.” The advocacy groups’ application to the CRTC said that, as of the third quarter of last year, Bell had 7.8 million wireless subscribers, 5.3 million residential and business landline phone subscribers, 2.2 million Internet subscribers, and 2.2 million customers of its satellite and Fibe television services. Bruce Cran, president of the Consumers’ Association of Canada, said given the size of Bell’s customer base, any database it keeps containing customer information will be highly sought after by hackers. “Banks of information that are kept are targets for hackers, and of course, the bigger the bank, the bigger the temptation is for hackers to tackle it,” Cran said in a phone interview. In October, Bell provided a link on its website where customers could opt out of receiving targeted ads, a move that White said is unsatisfactory. “How many Canadians are actually going to read this notice in the first place and act upon it?” White said. “The default position should be the full protection of privacy.” Bell will still track the information of those customers who opt out, though they will receive unfiltered and random ads instead of targeted ads, the groups said in their application to the CRTC. Bell’s Michelis compared what her company is doing to how Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. use customer information for the purpose of targeting ads, adding that “many of these companies do not allow customers to opt out of their relevant advertising programs as Bell does.” If the CRTC does not go as far as stopping Bell from using customer information for marketing purposes, PIAC and the consumers’ association are asking that Bell be required to have customers actively approve of having their information used in this way, as opposed to simply having the choice to opt out, White said. Cran said of the choice to opt out: “Isn’t that negative marketing? It should be the other way around. should be asking for permission to use . They will know that most people will not want to be in it in the first place.” White said that after the CRTC publicly posts the application made by PIAC and the consumers’ association, Bell, along with any other interested parties, will have 30 days to respond. After that, the applicants will have 10 days to answer to any responses that come in, he said, adding that the CRTC will then have a number of options, such as issuing a decision, putting out a notice for public consultation or holding public hearings. — With reporting by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca and Nicholas Kyonka at nkyonka@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Telecoms shouldn’t track customer habits for marketing: PIAC

News | January 27, 2014

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