Acxiom data-site update to let public see more

Acxiom Corp. Chief Executive Officer Scott Howe said the data collector’s updated aboutthedata.com website will give users “more options.”
Acxiom Corp. Chief Executive Officer Scott Howe said the data collector’s updated aboutthedata.com website will give users “more options.”

Acxiom Corp. will allow consumers a better look at the information the company has collected about them when it rolls out an update to its data website in the fall, Chief Executive Officer Scott Howe said during a recent interview at the data broker’s Little Rock headquarters.

“We want to give people more options,” Howe said.

So when Acxiom’s website, aboutthedata.com, is updated in a few months, the public will have access to a fuller set of data that includes the information the company uses to help its clients send direct advertisements in the mail. Currently, consumers can see only data used for online marketing,such as in emails.

Acxiom said it introduced its aboutthedata.com website in September in a step to becoming more transparent with its data.

“We need to do a better job at educating [consumers] on how their data is used to benefit them,” Howe said.

Acxiom is a data and technology company that collects information on hundreds of thousands of people and sells the information to its clients, such as retailers, to use in targeted marketing campaigns. The company draws its data from its clients, public records and from consumer in-store shopping habits.

Since aboutthedata.com was introduced, the website has received about 629,000visitors. Of those, 193,171 created accounts to view the data Acxiom had collected about them, Acxiom spokesman Ines Gutzmer said in an email.

On the company’s website, personal information is sorted into six categories: characteristic data, home data, household vehicle data, household economic data, household purchase data and household interests data.

Within those categories is biographical and economic information, such as a person’s birth date, how much money a person earns, as well as information about the user’s recent purchases.

The website gives users the opportunity to update the information that Acxiom has about them or to “opt out” and prevent the company from using the data for targeted marketing campaigns.

Only 2 percent of visitors to the website have opted out of the data usage, Gutzmer said.

Howe said he was “pleasantly surprised” to find out that many of the website’s users wanted to share more information with the company and correct what was listed.

“If you give people control and value, suddenly it isn’t a creepy thing,” he said. “It’s valuable.”

The top three pieces of information the website’s users change are the listings for their political parties, incomes and educations, Gutzmer said.

“I think aboutthedata.com has been a success because it’s been a very proactive approach to enabling consumers to understand what data is gathered on them,” said Brett Huff, an analyst with Stephens Inc. in Little Rock.

In recent years, data brokers like Acxiom have been under pressure to be more open about the information they collect, how it is gathered and how it is used. The industry has also been the subject of investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

The review by the Senate committee found that “data brokers operate behind a veil of secrecy. Data brokers typically amass data without direct interaction with consumers, and a number of the queried brokers perpetuate this secrecy by contractually limiting customers from disclosing their data sources,” according to the report released last year.

Jeffery Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington, D.C., said data brokers “really have to explain to the consumer and give control to the consumer.”

And while data brokers haven’t been the focus of changes regarding the National Security Agency’s spy programs and data gathering, President Barack Obama asked adviser John Podesta in January to review the way data are used in the government and private sectors, and how to protect people’s privacy.

The White House review on mass data collection and privacy will end this month, Podesta said in a blog post on the White House website in March.

Howe said he supports regulation and transparency of the industry, and believes that there should be limits on how data are used but he doesn’t think the government should have “sweeping power” over the industry.

“I’m so disappointed,” he said. “We did [aboutthedata.com] six months ago, and no one in the industry followed.”

Business, Pages 71 on 04/06/2014

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