Company accused of covert data gathering

A new computer program that tracks how people navigate their way around giveaway disks has been attacked for the way it collects information.

David Harris, a councillor on internet governance group InternetNZ, says the SMARTrack Media package does not sufficiently disclose to users that information is being collected.

"It doesn't matter how careful they've been with lawyers, they've not been very careful ethically. Even if it's legal it's not ethical."

The software has just been launched by Auckland-based disk manufacturer Media Technology.

Once a disk with the program is inserted into a computer, a message asks the user if he or she wants to connect to the internet for monitoring purposes. But if the machine is already online when starting the disk, no message is displayed and the program sends information to Media Technology automatically.

Media Technology's customers can then see the results on a specially created webpage to help them to work out why their campaigns succeed or fail.

Harris believes the software should disclose that information is being collected immediately the disk is inserted into the user's computer and such disclosures should be made irrespective of whether a user is connected to the internet.

"If it's not [illegal], it damn well ought to be. I'd be absolutely furious if I found out someone was doing that," Harris said.

Media Technology produced more than two-fifths of the nine million disks posted in Australasia last year.

Marketing manager Carl Naessens says users' actions are tracked in much the same way companies have been tracking website visitors for years.

No programs are downloaded on to users' computers and no personal information is collected, even though some companies have asked for such data.

"We don't collect that. We made it known to them that we're not interested in doing that. This is purely a marketing research tool. It's not used for businesses to get names to send unsolicited email or material to."

Naessens said Media Technology took care to meet legal requirements but he expected regulations on issues such as spam to tighten up during the next few years.

He said the interactive nature of disks was an advantage over more traditional print marketing and tracking disk usage was the "final piece in the puzzle".

"So [customers] can say, 'Okay, last week we sent out 5000 CDs ... 2400 of these have been opened, these were the days they were opened, these were the most popular times and these are the sections that our customers looked at."'

Rick Shera, partner at Auckland law firm Lowndes Jordan, said that provided the company was not collecting personal information it was outside the terms of the Privacy Act.

However, Shera said attempts abroad to ban cookies used to track website visitors, or introduce opt-in user prompts, had raised the debate of technological privacy.

"Where the balance lies between legitimate commercial activity and a person's right to privacy, and not to be invaded, is something which the law is struggling with ... the idea of privacy versus technology and its ability to collect information."