The mobile ads boom raises privacy concerns, and creative different forms of self-help that customers have been engaged in, as following:
The vast majority of cell phones and tablet devices are now equipped with internet browsers. Advertisers have capitalized on this new market by delivering user-specific ad content to these mobile devices. The Swedish research institute Berg Insight estimated that mobile marketing and ad sales would grow to $13.5 billion by 2015. Not only do these mobile devices provide personalized information about the user’s viewing habits, these devices also provide the ability to locate users geographically.
Legal constraints on the treatment of this type of personal data “are not very high” according to Mohssen Toumi of the consulting firm Booz & Company. Authorities in both the United States and Europe are debating what businesses should and should not be allowed to do. Both the Boucher Bill and the Best Practices Act emphasize providing detailed notice to consumers before the use and collection of their personal data. But if an application is created specifically for a mobile device, a long and detailed privacy notice may be difficult for consumers to read especially given the smaller screen sizes of these devices.
Some consumers have been unhappy with the level of privacy protection provided by the current regulatory framework and have engaged in several different forms of self-help: