Bell looks to avoid legal showdown with privacy commish

Faced with a possible legal fight against another agency of the federal government, BCE Inc. on Tuesday backed down after the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said the company refused to require customers to provide explicit consent before tracking their telecommunications habits in order to sell marketing profiles to third-party advertisers. The privacy commissioner's office issued a release Tuesday morning saying that while Bell had made a number of welcome concessions to what it calls its "relevant advertising program" (RAP), it had continued to make customers subject to the marketing tactics in question unless they took the initiative themselves to opt out. “We remain hopeful that Bell will reconsider its position but are prepared to address this unresolved issue in accordance with our authorities under PIPEDA (the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act), which could involve taking the matter to the Federal Court,” Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien said in the release. Later that day, Bell spokesman Jason Laszlo said in an emailed statement: "Bell will abide by the privacy commission’s decision, including the opt-in approach. We’re dedicated to protecting customer privacy and thank the commission for clarifying the rules." Bell is already fighting two CRTC decisions before the Federal Court of Appeal, in which the regulator banned exempting mobile-television services from data caps and the use of simultaneous substitution for the Super Bowl starting in 2017. Laszlo added that rules surrounding targeted advertising "must apply not only to Canadian companies but to international companies operating here, like Facebook and Google, to ensure a fair and competitive marketplace." In the press release Tuesday, Therrien said: “This is not something exclusive to Bell. We will be reaching out to other organizations that are engaged in or considering this type of activity, including the wider telecommunications sector, as we believe others could benefit from our findings in this investigation.” However, in its report, the privacy commissioner's office said that "to our knowledge, no other telecommunications service providers and broadcasting distribution undertakings are engaged in a targeted advertising program similar to the RAP." It noted Telus Corp. sent a letter to the CRTC that said the company "would not use the personal information of its customers to enable targeted advertising by third parties without its customers' express consent." The privacy commissioner's office did not refer to companies such as Google Inc. or Facebook Inc. by name on Tuesday, and in its report said it would not comment on the "online websites and other organizations" Bell had argued are also involved in targeted advertising. Bell announced in 2013 that it would start tracking customers' Internet browsing, calling patterns, app usage, TV viewing and location-based services in order to give third-party advertisers information to better tailor ads to customers. The privacy commissioner's office said in its report Tuesday that in the weeks after Bell announced the program, it received 170 complaints from people saying Bell was violating PIPEDA, which was the most ever relating to that legislation. It added that, as of the time the report was written, Bell had not yet applied its targeted advertising program beyond mobile services, though it did have plans to eventually expand it to wireline Internet, home-phone and TV customers. It also said Bell was not yet using information derived from GPS or cell towers to generate location data on customers for the program. The commissioner's release said it was "pleased" that Bell agreed not to continue building marketing profiles for customers who opted out of the targeted advertising program and to delete information it had already collected on such customers. It added that Bell would now include language in agreements with advertisers forbidding them from using methods such as cookies, device fingerprinting and other tracking methods to individually identify its customers. As well, the privacy commissioner said Bell agreed to use partial rather than full postal codes in the advertising program, to stop including credit scores with customer profiles and no longer allow its retail outlet, The Source, access to customer information uncovered by the program. The commissioner's report said due to the sensitivity of information collected under Bell's program, "express consent" from customers that participate is "appropriate" under PIPEDA. It added that "reasonable expectations" from customers would be that the onus is on Bell to obtain permission to use their information for this kind of marketing, rather than having the responsibility on customers to opt out. The report said there were "serious issues" with the "validity" of a survey Bell commissioned that showed more than 60 per cent of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed that it is reasonable that Internet browsing information be used for targeted advertising. Among other issues, the commissioner found the question that focused on online browsing was "not reflective of the actual RAP, which is much broader, involving a telecommunications carrier and broadcasting distribution undertaking using network usage information (including mobile and home Internet network usage, television viewing, and calling patterns) and account/demographic information (including city and postal code, age, gender, average billing amount, etc.)." A complaint to the CRTC by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and Consumers' Association of Canada over the same advertising program remains outstanding. "We're very pleased with it," PIAC executive director John Lawford said in a phone interview on Tuesday about the privacy commissioner's stance against Bell's advertising program. Lawford said he believes the CRTC has completed its investigation into the program and expects the commission to issue a decision in the near future. — With reporting by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Bell looks to avoid legal showdown with privacy commish

News | April 7, 2015

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Bell looks to avoid legal showdown with privacy commish

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