By Gary Kibel

Marketers are excellent at making use of popular cultural trends and the latest fads, as in the case of social networking. In just a short time, the use of social networking and user-generated content has exploded on the Internet, and may soon do so in the wireless world as well. So naturally, marketers have sought to jump on the bandwagon.

According to a Forrester Research survey of over 90 marketers, approximately 20% of those polled used social networking and user-generated content in connection with marketing campaigns in March 2007, but that number is expected to rise to over 60% by the end of this year. Cingular, Volvo, Playskool, P&G, Paramount and countless others have found ways to integrate these services into their campaigns.

As more and more consumers use these services, and marketers employ their creative skills to lure additional users in, the amount of data being input and shared as a result has become a significant privacy concern for businesses, consumers, regulators and lawmakers, because personal information is simply posted and publicly available for anyone to take and exploit right now.

In a recent case, a Texas family sued MySpace, alleging that the social networking site was liable for an assault upon their underage daughter by a 19-year-old man who she met online. The case was ultimately dismissed, but it highlights the potential risks that these services face.

In an effort to address this particular issue, MySpace recently engaged Sentinel Tech Holding to establish a system to scrub the MySpace user database against registered sex offender databases to weed out those persons from the MySpace community.

Lawmakers, many of whom undoubtedly have teens and tweens using these services, have recently taken a stand. The bill, “An Act Concerning Social Networking Internet Sites and Enforcement of Electronic Mail Phishing and Identity Theft Laws,” which was introduced in Connecticut, takes the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) a few steps further. Not only must applicable sites prohibit access to minors, but in addition, those sites must implement procedures to independently confirm the accuracy of personal information collected from members and parents. Bills aimed at social networking have also been introduced in other states, including Georgia, Illinois and North Carolina. Not to be outdone, Congress is also considering legislation designed to protect children from harm as a result of the overexposure of information through new online services.

Clearly, privacy concerns emerge in every new medium or forum for communication, and it is incumbent upon all those involved to proactively address these issues with consumers’ privacy expectations and best interests in mind. However, it remains to be seen whether the best approach is new laws specifically tailored to these mediums, self-regulation or simply the application of existing laws to these burgeoning forums.

Gary Kibel (gkibel@dglaw.com) is an attorney with Davis & Gilbert LLP in the New Media; Intellectual Property; Advertising, Marketing and Promotions law department.

 

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