Broadband customers may need to find out more about online marketing and advertising strategies if they are to be fully aware of their rights regarding personal information, it has been asserted.

Following the publication of a new study that showed the general public was 50 per cent more trusting in the internet than they were five years or so ago, one expert has said it is clear that more information needs to be made available.

Head of regulatory affairs at the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) - the organisation partly responsible for the research - Nick Stringer said that companies were now becoming more sophisticated in their approach to engaging with people via a number of channels.

For this reason, he explained that the public needed to be made fully aware of all the options available to them with regards opting out of certain facilities, while it was equally important for marketers to tread carefully or risk alienating them.

"We know that once internet users are presented with all the facts the appeal of targeting advertising increases and the IAB and its members are dedicated to making this happen," he concluded.

One way in which advertisers are increasingly able to target certain members of the public is through social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

This week, Google launched a new service called Social Search which allows people more options for locating information shared across these portals and also provides linking facilities to RSS feeds and Gmail contacts.

Categories: Broadband, Internet Security

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