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Mobile marketers need to get in front of the privacy concerns being expressed by regulators in order to ensure legislation is not passed that might be bad for consumers as well as themselves, according to a Merkle executive who participated in a Mobile Marketer webinar yesterday.

Executives from Merkle, Medialets and Truste participated in Mobile Marketer?s ?Handling privacy and security issues as the mobile database grows? webinar and spoke about the need for marketers to have understandable privacy policies. The executives also offered discussed how to build a mobile database.

?We are in a place and time when we all need to be concerned about consumer privacy,? said Chris Wyman, vice president and general manager of the mobile practice at Merkle, Columbia, MD. ?Marketers need to take on a leadership role here.

?What?s unique about mobile is a lot of the legislation that has been governing what is happening today is older legislation that didn?t really contemplate mobile marketing,? he said. ?It is critical that we really get in front of this and provide leadership to the market to insure that we don?t wind up with something that universally disfavors both the consumer and mobile marketers.

?Mobile devices are very personal, so I believe that consumer expect a certain amount of personalization and that means sharing more data.?

A growing issue
Concern over mobile privacy is growing. Not only are regulators taking a look at the issue but there are numerous instances of consumers ? and their legal proxies ? taking issue with how companies are handling privacy in the mobile space, including law suits alleging an app or device is tracking a user?s activities without permission.

Privacy concerns have even forced Apple to begin deprecating the use of unique device identifiers, or UDIDs, which are used to track response in mobile apps but can conceivably be used to identify a specific user. This is creating a challenge for the industry as it tries to find a suitable replacement that will not have the same privacy concerns.

?The UDID is dead, long live whatever else comes along next,? Mr. Wyman said. ?We certainly can live without it as an industry - what is missing is some sort of consistent and reasonably persistent ID mechanism like third-party cookies.?

Consumers are justified in their concerns over mobile privacy, according to the executives. This is because the mobile industry is still growing and consumers need to be mindful of companies that have access to their personal data.

However, part of the reason for the concern on the part of consumers and others is that they do not necessarily understand what tracking means and how it can be beneficial to users.

Additionally, users tend to store a lot of personal information on their mobile devices, and they are concerned about that information getting into the wrong hands.

The tracking of geolocation data, which is unique to mobile devices, is also a big concern for consumers.

Easy to understand
The crux of the issue is how mobile marketers appropriately disclose that they want to collect data from a user in such a way that is clearly understandable.

While it is the consumer?s responsibility to read privacy policies, at the same time, marketers are responsible to clearly communicate in a jargon free way that everybody understands.

?Privacy policies are hard to understand, there is a lot of legalese in there, but it is the consumer?s responsibility to understand them,? said Brian Wiechowski, mobile advertising manager at Truste, San Francisco. ?The responsibility is shared.

?What I think the industry can do is make privacy policies more understandable, making it clear, easy to understand as to what information is being collected,? he said. ?It really boils down to doing what you say you are going to do, being transparent and disclosing what you are doing in a way that everyone can understand.?

While legislation governing how mobile data is collected and used could be forthcoming sometime in the next couple of years, the industry still needs to focus on how to use consumer data responsibly in the mean time.

Mobile databases
In terms of mobile databases, companies are beginning to collect this information but have not yet been able to rationalize it into anything that ties back to what they are doing in other platforms.

However, the concerns over privacy is forcing some companies to focus on what they can do well in mobile that does not require building a database.

Marketers face other challenges in terms of building mobile databases, such as figuring out who owns the data, the marketing team or the CRM team.

Additionally, there are multiple mobile tactics that can be used for gathering data and no single platform for accessing all of them, which means the data has to be aggregated.

Overall, there are few standards and regulation when it comes to creating a mobile database, which is why Merkle urges its clients to pay attention to CRM standards and privacy concerns when building a database.

When it comes to privacy, marketers also need to understand where any third-party user data is coming from and make sure it was obtained with the appropriate permission because they can be held liable if it is not.

The tablet factor
Consumer privacy also needs to be respected similarly across mobile devices, from smartphones to tablets.

For tablets, marketers may need to allow consumers to make decisions around what types of data they want to share as these devices are often being used by multiple members of the same family and for interactive activities such as shopping, where a consumer may want to share more data.

While the usage for tablets may be different, when it comes to how they are tracked and how data usage policies are disclosed, it should be the same.

Marketers need to make sure they are consistently applying their privacy policy with each of their technology vendors, including vendors for location tracking, cookies and NFC.

Marketers need to clearly communicate the value they are providing to users by collecting data from them. If they are leveraging location based data, they should be asking themselves how they are using the information and what its value to consumers is.

For example, there are a number of apps where location is an integral part of the app but publishers also use the data for location-based advertising. This raises the question of whether there should be a multilevel opt in or if the consumer, by sharing data with the publisher, is effectively entering a contract saying it is ok to share their data with advertisers.

?There should be a lot more granularity with respect to what is opted in and out of,? Truste?s Mr. Wiechowski said. ?If they don?t want targeted advertising in apps, but they want information to be shared with foursquare, consumers should have that choice.?

Consumers should also be able to change their choices in terms of what information they are sharing when they want to.

While the regulators are figuring out how to proceed with mobile privacy, it is important that the industry regulate itself. Currently, only about 5 percent of apps have privacy policies ? this is an issue that the industry could easily address on its own and which could ward off regulation.

?Give consumers choice, provide notice where data collection is going to occur, provide that notice in a very clear, concise readable and understandable format, provide opt-ins where the data collection is particularly personal or otherwise be considered invasive,? said Eric Litman, CEO of Medialets, New York. ?From a marketer?s side, get a handle on how do you live in a world where some percentage of the audience is clearly trackable and measurable and some percentage of the audience isn?t.?

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