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Last december The Federal Trade Commission proposed a set of principles to guide the self-regulation of the part of the online advertising industry that uses behavioral targeting. They also announced they wanted to start up a dialogue with all interested parties. Microsoft picked up the glove first by releasing its five pillars of online consumer protection.

The FTC suggested that every site where behavioral data is collected should have a clear statement about the purpose of the information-gathering. People should also be presented with the choice of whether or not to have their data collected.

The information gathered should also be protected, and should only be stored “as long as necessary to fulfill a legitimate business or lae enforcement need.” The FTC also suggested that if the data needs to be used differently than initially described in the site policies, consumers should be asked permission.

It even called for the industry to define exactly what “sensitive data” really is, and even goes so far as to suggest gathering this type of data should be simply forbidden, instead of letting users decide if collecting it is okay or not.

Microsoft responded to all this with it’s five pillars, that will apply to :

1. Sites that are involved in behavioral advertising
2. The use of sensitive personal data in general
3. The collection of user data for online advertising
4. Delivering ads on unrelated sites
5. The use of personally identifiable information

As the privacy debate rages between two very opposed sides that point out the anonimity of stored electronic data versus personally identifiable ip-addresses, probably only an industry strictly regulating itself can avoid coming under strict external regulation.

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