Privacy and Injunctions - Evidence - Parliament

Facebook, Google, and Twitter—Oral evidence (QQ 1384–1455)
Q1393 Lord Mawhinney: But it is only more acceptable to the user because you
have already plundered personal information against the background of “we don’t do the
personal”. In this highly competitive marketplace, the commercial pressures will increase
and, therefore, the pressure to make use of even more personal information is likely to be
exacerbated. Isn’t that the case?
DJ Collins: Sir, I understand the point you are making. I can speak only on behalf of
Google. As to the first question you asked, there’s no difference in the way that we target
advertising whether you’re a high profile public person or a private citizen, I really want to
make very clear. The point I made in answer to an earlier question was how much control
can you give to the user over the advertising that they are going to see in their online
experience. The first point I make about Google services is that we are very transparent
about the collection, the storage and the use of that data. Secondly, there is a really easy
tool to use—I hate to labour the point—but there is a very easy tool called the Ads
Preference Manager, which can turn off and turn on the various forms of advertising that
you are going to see. Interestingly, our research shows that when people use that tool it is
generally not to turn it off it’s to say actually Google, “You’re making the wrong
assumptions about me. I am actually interested in this, not that, and I would like to see
advertising on this, not that.” It is more of a mistake on our part about the form of
advertising, the nature of the advertising they’re seeing and content of it rather than seeing
the advertising itself.
Colin Crowell: From Twitter’s perspective, our ad products are slightly different
from those of the other services, in the sense we do not use personally identifiable
information for serving the ads. It is based on non-personally identifiable public followership
in the Twitter timeline.
Q1394 Martin Horwood: I am quite comfortable about providing my personal
information to your companies and getting ads in return, but clearly it is theoretically
possible you could go beyond that and sell personal data or allow direct access by
advertisers or direct marketers. At the moment that is illegal in the UK because of data
protection law, and presumably also in Germany and many other jurisdictions, but not all.
Do you obey the jurisdiction where you happen to be, or do you expect jurisdictions
around the world to be respected for different users?
DJ Collins: I cannot speak for the whole of the internet, but from Google’s
perspective I think Richard made a very good point, which is the relationship that we have
with our users is one that is dependent on trust. The trust goes way beyond what is legally
compliant in one country. In respect of people’s personal data and whether we sell that to
third parties, we don’t do it, there are no plans to do it. Whatever we do do in terms of
advertising is always based on how do we provide the most relevant information but also
how we maintain that bond of trust that we have with our users.
Q1395 Martin Horwood: The principal question I am asking is: do you do that on
the basis of only trying to maintain a commercial interest in that trust, or are you trying to
obey the different jurisdictions in which users operate? To give a different example, let us
say somebody did not want lots of ads to be generated on their home PC because they had
been looking up divorce lawyers. I do not want anyone to read anything into that particular
example. You can see how somebody might think their privacy had been invaded even then.
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