The Plaque & Privacy
The words etched onto the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty read: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore/Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
How about: Give me your data, your exhaust/Your masses of data yearning to stay private/The wretched refuse of your every move out of teeming databanks/Send me your permission, the protection, not lost to me/I close the vault inside my ISP!
You see, Buzzfeed and other news outlets recently reported (and I don’t think it was fake news) that President Trump Just Repealed Rules That Banned ISPs From Selling Your Private Data.
His signature is the last thing between you and Comcast selling your browsing history and your location. Read the full story
So, inbound came an email from one of my favorite people — Larry Friedberg, CMO at Modria, who wrote to me:
“There is a chance, right now, for an ISP to stand up and be a true advocate on behalf of their customers by taking the “No Share Pledge” (I made this up but I like the idea of ISPs for NSP). We promise NEVER to sell your data to a third party unless you want us to. Take it a step further … how about ISPs that offer to split the proceeds of ad sales on browser have stories on an aggregated basis with their own customers? Or, better yet, asking them which charity they’d like to donate the proceeds to? “
Larry called it advocacy branding and asked me WDYT?
I say, hear, hear and bring it on.
Somewhere, someplace there is an ISP who will stand like the beacon of liberty at our shore, and say, no more. Stop the insanity, put the consumer back in control, and use it as a legitimate branding moment. At Outsell’s DataMoney we heard from PeopleHedge, a young startup with a similar vision, but it’s going to take someone big, someone bold, someone who dares to hold up the torch like Lady Liberty. Just like Tim and Jim, who said they are going to fix the diversity challenge in their company by 2020 and who mean it, we need leadership in the world of ISPs to stand up and tell consumers — I’m taking the no-share pledge, and I will reward you from my shores.
Let the flow of data advocacy begin!
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