SAN MATEO (02/11/2000) - A SMALL BUT discernible trend in the technology used to target consumers is focusing on protecting privacy rights rather than invading them. Companies are discovering that there is money to be made in offering privacy protection along with their much-prized one-to-one marketing model.
The first products are bubbling up out of the PC online support industry.
McAfee.com, an ISV of anti-virus and security products, will launch Silhouette in the second quarter. The technology creates a Personal Advertising Profile on the desktop with the user's participation. The profile holds data on the system configuration and resident software. On the server, advertisers specify rules that only deliver ads based on the system configuration created in the user's profile.
For example, a component supplier for memory chips might create rules for delivering an ad if the profile reveals a system is configured with less than 32MB of RAM.
"All of the calculation for the targeting is done on the user's machine. None of that information is going on a list that someone can sell," said Jim Balderston, a business analyst at McAfee in Santa Clara, Calif.
McAfee is not the only company creating protected user profiles. Earlier this month Avio Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif., quietly signed a deal with Dell that will put a technology similar to Silhouette, called Atune, on every computer that leaves the company's Austin, Texas, plant -- that's 10,000 systems per day, and 25 million desktops yearly. Atune stores information on the user's system configuration and software. Using what Avio calls a "double-filtering" technology, it checks in with the Avio server once a day for updates. It is able to flash pre-emptive alerts if a user is about to do something inappropriate for the current system configuration or software.
Technology such as Silhouette and Atune is a response to the rising hue and cry about privacy.
"If you are a high-volume Internet user it's like you have a target on your back and front," said Harry Fenik, executive vice president of Zona Research, in Redwood City, Calif.
But not everyone is convinced that technology that creates a user profile is putting the interests of the user first.
"Our concern is whether or not their No. 1 concern is protecting users privacy rather than exploiting them for their profile," said Dov Smith, a spokesperson for Zero-Knowledge Systems, an Internet privacy company in Montreal that allows users to hide their identity while surfing the Net.
Nevertheless, with both Avio and McAfee confirming plans to extend their technologies to other markets, the concept of a personal advertising profile is apparently going to spread beyond the help desk industry.
"There is the potential for substantial evolutionary progress. If you can create smart [rules-based] advertising delivery, why couldn't you create smart storefronts with rules that responded to your profile? It is much the same process," Balderston said.