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Network Service Providers and Privacy

Advertising runs on data. It always has. Long before programmatic ads and algorithms, we saw Mercedes-Benz ads in Fortune and Chevy ads in Mechanix Illustrated. Some clever guy had figured out that Fortune readers and Mechanix Illustrated readers bought different cars. The success of an advertising outlet has always depended on the outlet’s generation of sales. Successful sales depend on finding qualified buyers.

Today, qualified buyers are spotted by their on-line habits, that now include choice of websites to visit, age, gender, physical locations, income, purchase patterns and many other factors. Based on these factors, on-line ads are targeted to narrowly identified network users. Advertisers now have masses of data and abundant computing power to process the data.

Websites as Data Sources

But the advertisers want more data, ads targeted more precisely. Who is surprised? There are two main sources of consumer data for targeted advertising. The first source is the websites we use all the time. Google and Facebook are most prominent. They know their users and use the knowledge to aim the ads they sell to their advertisers. These targeted ads are the revenue source that funds the free services these sites offer.

Network Service Providers

The other main source of buyer information is network service providers like Comcast and Verizon. Google and Facebook have in depth information on what people do while using these sites but the know very little about what is happening outside their own sites. Service providers have a wider, but shallower, view of people’s activity.

Google knows you searched on “archery” and clicked on an informational archery site. Google identifies you as a candidate for bow and arrow ads. Comcast knows something else. Inside the sports site, you clicked on a link to Ed’s Sporting Goods. Comcast might try to sell Ed ads that they will target at you. Only Ed and you bank know that you ordered a baseball and mitt, so you probably won’t get any baseball ads.

Data Brokers

A data broker might try to purchase data from Google, Comcast, Ed, and your bank. With the purchased data, they can put together an even more detailed picture of your habits. Exactly what information the data broker will get depends on the privacy policies and regulations of Google, Comcast, Ed’s Sporting Goods, and your bank.

These data brokers disturb some people, even conspiracy skeptics like me, because they seem to have little accountability. Users have the “Terms of Service” and privacy policies that govern their relationships with Google, Comcast, and their bank, but the data brokers have no direct relationship with the people profiled in their data bases. Are the brokers good or bad? We don’t know. If they misuse our data, will we ever know? Do we have any recourse? I don’t have answers to these questions yet, but I think we all need them.

The FCC and the FTC

Both websites and network service providers are subject to regulations on what they can collect, how they can collect it, and the data they can sell, but the regulations vary. Google and Facebook are subject to Federal Trade Commission guidelines, like all businesses engaged in interstate trade. Network service providers are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission as common carriers.

There are significant differences. Network service providers are treated as utilities. Utilities are services such as electrical and telephone services that people must have. Google and Facebook are businesses that consumers choose to deal with. Because people have no choice, utilities are regulated more strictly than most businesses. Are network services a utility, or just businesses? Last year, the FCC declared them to be a utility and subject to FCC regulation, but some argue that the ruling was wrong and should be corrected.

Opt-in vs Opt-out

A critical point is whether collecting consumer information should be “opt-in” or “opt-out”? If collection is opt-in, information cannot begin to be collected until the customer says it is okay. If collection is opt-out, it is okay to collect information until the customer takes the effort to say no.

Which way is best? Consumers with informed opinions generally prefer opt-in, but a lot of people don’t care and think opt-out is fine. Businesses that collect and use data tend to prefer opt-out schemes.

Business or Utility?

When network service providers were classified utilities, they became subject to opt-in rules. FTC guidelines, which apply to Google and Facebook, are opt-out. Recently, the new administration changed the FCC regulation for network service providers to opt-out, similar to the FTC guidelines. Some consumers are quite concerned.

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Engineering In the Clouds

Yesterday, I began a new blog on Network World. It is called “Engineering in the Clouds,” and it calls on my experience at CA and my two earlier books, Cloud Standards and How Clouds Hold IT Together. My first blog is on some of the reasons cloud projects do not succeed. Cloud failures can occur anywhere in the hype cycle. My plan is to publish about once a month. Since privacy has been on my mind the last few days, I am thinking about clouds and privacy for my next blog.

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Managerial and Functional Interfaces To Services

In writing Cloud Standards, I  spent more time than I expected working on a good description of the distinction between functional and managerial interfaces to services. I referred to management and functional interfaces recently in a blog on the CA Cloud Storm Chasers site. I’ll say a little more here.

Functional versus managerial are clearly separate in my head, but stating the difference succinctly is to not so easy.  I’ve got it down to “a managerial interface manages the delivery of a service to the consumer and a functional interface delivers the service functionality.” I say much more about it in the book.

Distinguishing functional from managerial is important because  standardization of managerial interfaces plays differently than standardization of functional interfaces.

Word processing functional interface

There is no limiting or predicting functional interfaces as they change and respond to technology and consumer taste. For at least a decade, word processors sported a narrow strip menu on top of a big more-or-less WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)  entry pane. There were minor variations between the contenders, but that was what a word processor looked like.

If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

So what did the leading word processor development team do to their 2007 version? They switched to a ribbon menu at the top. Not a big change, but enough to generate confusion and grumbling from experienced users. New functionality? Not much. I certainly uttered a few choice words about gratuitous change when the CA IT department installed a copy on my work laptop. But that’s the way with functional interfaces. Somebody always has a sleeker, jazzier idea.

And that is as it should be.  A few years later, I am used to the ribbon and have grown to prefer it. When I switch to an open source word processor on Linux, I miss that once-hated ribbon. Redmond scores! I hope the ribbon is not tied up tightly in patents because I want the open source word processors to adopt it. Then I can install a ribbon menu word processor on my Linux boxes.

Managerial interfaces

Management interfaces are different. Often they are APIs. They tend to change only when technology changes and they are often  held in line by standards organizations that intentionally tamp down variations that do not confer clear benefits. This prevents unnecessary breakage of other applications that use the managerial interfaces.  We are less likely to see the equivalent of an apparently quixotic change to ribbon menus on the managerial side.

Distinguishing functional from managerial encourages both innovative functionality and stable integration. It makes life easier for everyone.

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Introducing Cloud Standards

To begin, my name is Marvin Waschke– hence the catchy domain name– and I am a software architect for CA Technologies. I’ve worked for CA for close to sixteen years. I have always been interested in the standards side of computing. I began to work with standards groups even before I joined CA.

This is my new site, Cloud Standards.

This is me standing in front of a walnut tree.

I’m in the process of writing a book, which is also called Cloud Standards, for CA Press and Apress. On this site, I will introduce myself and the book. I plan to post items  I think might be of interest to readers of Cloud Standards.

I believe in standards. That may seem like a strange thing to say, and I think many of my colleagues in the computing professions are less passionate about standards than I. But they are wrong. One of my goals for Cloud Standards is to  promote the importance and value of standards in cloud computing.

I also believe in cloud computing, but possibly differently from many who are enthusiastic about the cloud. I am an engineer. I would rather build something than sell it, which certainly  is a disadvantage in business, but it gives me a different perspective from the folks on the business side.  I like cloud computing because it is a triumph of modern technology, because it could not be without the cumulative efforts of software engineers like me,  and because it allows everyone to do more with less.

Regards, Marv