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Important Twitter Policy Announcement.

Hi kids, sorry to pull a Badluck Schleprock on you all but did you know that advertisers know all about your little Crackberry messaging and intertube surfing habits:

Smartphones, like the iPhone and BlackBerry Curve, are the latest and potentially most extensive way for advertisers to aim ads at certain consumers. Advertisers already tailor ads for small groups of consumers on the Web based on personal information. But cellphones have a much higher potential for personalized advertising, especially when they use applications like Yelp or Urbanspoon with GPS to identify a person?s location, right down to the street corner where they are standing.

Advertisers will pay high rates for the ability to show, for example, ads for a nearby restaurant to someone leaving a Broadway show, especially when coupled with information about the gender, age, finances and interests of the consumer.

Eswar Priyadarshan, the chief technology officer of Quattro Wireless, which places advertising for clients like Sony on mobile sites, says he typically has 20 pieces of information about a customer who has visited a site or played with an application in his network. ?The basic idea is, you go through all these channels, and you get as much data as possible,? he said.

The capability for collecting information has alarmed privacy advocates.

?It?s potentially a portable, personal spy,? said Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, who will appear before Federal Trade Commission staff members this month to brief them on privacy and mobile marketing. He is particularly concerned about data breaches, advertisers? access to sensitive health or financial information, and a lack of transparency about how advertisers are collecting data. ?Users are going to be inclined to say, sure, what?s harmful about a click, not realizing that they?ve consented to give up their information.?

Question for you civil litigators -- if advertisers can obtain that kind of personal information, don't you think opposing parties could seek to discover it as well?

Which all leads me to this very important Twitter policy announcement:

Henceforth I will only send Twitter messages that consist, in whole or in part, of texts sent to or from former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Full post as published by South Florida Lawyers on March 12, 2009 (boomark / email).