Ending the end of your career.

In my 34 year career, there were three or four times I thought my career might be over. 

The realization that I had hit a wall usually came late at night when I looked back upon the work I either was or was not producing. Or it came as I faced a bout of unemployment and I looked at my book, and my future prospects, with despond.

I think most people, regardless of their profession, have spells where they feel like they've reached the end. A lanky pitcher might have seven or ten games in a row where he can't find home plate, or he's lost a few miles-per-hour on his heater. He gets shelled repeatedly and he ends the game in the showers, staring down at his hands wondering "where did it all go."

The trick to lasting, as I seem to have lasted--at least so far--is the same trick you need to do good work: keep coming back with something better. That is, when something dies, or gets slaughtered along the way to approval, don't give in. Keep trying to win. 

Or, in the succinct words of Steve Hayden, "the best revenge is a better ad."

My two cents say that career setbacks--regardless of their cause--happen to nearly everyone. As above, "the best revenge is a better job."

Somehow--whether it's reworking your book, or trying to jump-start your career via freelance--you have to find a way to rejuvenate yourself. You have to make a u-turn to get out of a dead-end.

Not for a second do I think any of this is easy. And there will be moments, probably, maybe weeks or months, where fear, depression and anger may also be your enemies. 

But, whatever this means, quoting Lady Macbeth, "...screw your courage to the sticking-place / And we'll not fail”.

A disarmingly self-effacing Slap-of-the-Week from Uncle Slappy.

Poetry in the City.

On the most beautiful Spring day since the Big Bang banged, I spotted this "poem" on 86th and Fifth this morning, adjacent to the now-blooming Central Park.

Steve Hayden, Hall of Famer.

Last night I was lucky enough to have cadged an invitation to the American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony. I say lucky because my mentor Steve Hayden was there and finally, after nearly 40 years of doing great work and building great businesses, he was enshrined into the Hall.

I was already in the business for about 15 years when I finally started working for Steve. And in fact, I had already worked for four previous Hall-of-Famers: Ron Rosenfeld, Len Sirowitz, Amil Gargano and Mike Tesch. All of them created reams of great business-building work.

But there was only one Steve.

He made you better—maybe because he believed in you, more than you believed in yourself—the moment you met him.

Early during my time with Steve, I was in a van with he and Susan Westre, his art director, going to a shoot. Steve got a call that the spot we were slated to shoot had just been killed by the client.

I was sitting in the back of the van, shyly, far away from Steve and Susan. Steve turned around and handed me his PC.

“They’ve just killed the spot,” he told me. “Write a new one.”

I’ve felt pressure before in my career, but never like that. But Steve told me to write a spot. So I wrote.

I thought at the time maybe he was being a jerk, putting me—brand new in the agency to the test.

Looking back on it now—19 years later, what Steve was doing was showing me love. He was letting me know that he believed I could do the job.

In about 30 minutes, filled with fear, I handed the computer with my script on it back to Steve.

“This is good,” he said.

At least that's how I remember it. And that counts for something.

There are a lot of big reasons Steve was inducted into the AAF’s Hall of Fame last night. And chances are, I’m the only one who remembers that morning in the van and what Steve did, and what he made me do. It was a small thing.

But as far as I’m concerned, that morning 19 years ago is one more reason Steve deserves every honor he gets.

-->

And then some.

The fight.

There are days, I probably shouldn't admit this, that I feel my age. When I realize I was born closer to the premiere of "Citizen Kane," than the debut of "Star Wars." On days when I feel like this, a sadness comes over me. 

I am no longer Housman's "Athlete Dying Young." I did not "slip betimes away/From fields where glory doesn't stay." No, I hung in--maybe past my time--and I keep slugging. Though who knows if my punches have any force left in them.

I read last night a piece I love--it solidified my dour mood--by the late great Red Smith, long-time sportswriter for "The New York Times," and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

The column is called "Night for Joe Louis," and it's a beautiful, sad an solemn account of Louis--after 17-years of fighting for money--being knocked out of the ring by 28-year-old Rocky Marciano, a puncher in his prime.

"For seventeen years," Smith writes, "three months, and twenty-two days Louis fought for money...Now the punch that was launched seventeen years ago had landed. A young man, Rocky Marciano, had knocked the old man out. That was all except--

"Well, except that this time he was lying down in his dressing-room in the catacombs of Madison Square Garden.
Memory retains scores of pictures of Joe in his dressing room, always sitting up, relaxed, answering questions in his slow, thoughtful way. This time only, he was down...."

"This kid," Joe said, "knocked me out with what? Two punches. Schmeling knocked me out with--musta been a hundred punches. But," Joe said, "I was twenty-two years old. You can take more then than later on...

"An old man's dream ended. A young man's vision of the future opened wide. Young men have visions, old men have dreams. But the place for old men to dream is beside the fire."

Like I said, I'm feeling creaky. No less facile and synapsed than I ever was, but maybe a little slower on the draw than I once was.

I've been drawing a living from writing for 38-years now--I don't remember how many months and days, and I'm good at what I do.

But every-so-often, I feel knocked through the ropes. Unsure whether or not to continue the fight.

Words and then some.

Maybe it's Nostalgia on my part (nostos=home; algia=sickness) but I refuse with every fiber of my soul to believe that the printed word is dead.

Right now I am about 1/3 of the way through Christopher de Hamel's great book, "Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World." Buy it here.

Hamel travels the world in search of some of the most important books ever created--some of the most finely produced, revered, valuable and cherished.

I know our writings today--especially our writing in advertising--have all the longevity of a snowflake in August. Words come and go like bad neighbors, and with the great renaissance of television, where there always seem to be ten or 14 great serials to watch, there doesn't seem to be much life left in the written word.

I resist this--no matter how text has plummeted, no matter how poor it seems amongst its more powerful media counterparts.

First off, I believe information imparted through the written word has an indelibleness that is unmatched. That's just conjecture on my part--but I'm sticking to it. Second, and maybe more important is the quietude demanded by reading.

I leave myself an hour each evening and slowly turn and sometimes savor the pages of whatever I'm reading. I try to put myself in the place of the characters or subject. I try to forget the stupidity of our current Trumpian age, the cares and woes of my personal world, and the noise of noisome society. Finally, the written word is to my mind RESISTANCE.

It is resistance against the onslaught of dumbness. Of tweets and sensationalism and illiteracy and a lowering of standards and blurts that pass as thoughts.

These are all fights I know I will lose. We seem to be on a runaway horse of the Apocalypse--galloping headlong into a denial of truth. But it's a fight I will not give up on. It's too important to me.

Maybe Faulkner was wrong. When the last ding-dong of doom sounds, maybe we will neither endure nor prevail.  But I will be surrounded by the words I love.

And this might be said of me.

He went down swinging.

We're the Gobbledegook people.™

"Some men are born mediocre,
some men achieve mediocrity,
and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them."  
Joseph Heller (on Major Major) in “Catch-22.”

One of the things that depresses me about the world today and advertising in particular is that I no longer know what anyone does.

I’ve seen this in a job listing:

“Verbal Design is the practice of conceiving and crafting language to reflect and drive a connected brand experience.”

Oh, ok.

I’ve seen an agency describe itself like this:

“We architect, design and deliver iconic experiences, services and products that improve people’s lives…We deliver a cohesive blueprint across customer connection points that will satisfy audience needs and surpass business goals.”

Another writes:

“We provide strategic creative and digital ideas helping clients to Lead the Change and to succeed in their own marketing transformation.”

Yet another:

“We’re an innovation platform that lowers the risk of innovation for industry leaders and helps emerging companies grow and scale their businesses. We help the C-Suite innovate and outpace disruption by designing the business models, services, and brands needed to win. We create campaigns from the ground up that are designed to be shared and resonate in our connected culture.”

I’m trying to imagine how a baseball second-baseman would be described in similarly tortured prose.

“We create vertical, horizontal and lateral in-field experiences that circumvent the serial tabulation of competitive markers of success by designing mid-field business models that help our organization succeed and resonate in our connected culture.”


AKA

We have good range and prevent the other guys from scoring. This improves attendance and makes fans happy.

As our self-definitions have become more and more incomprehensible, our business—as a whole— has floundered more and more. 

We don’t know what we do or make or why we exist anymore. It doesn’t help that the people who run the behemoth companies that own all the agencies have never practiced the trade their businesses are in.

Years ago, I toiled at one of the great agencies of all-time, Ally & Gargano. Their mission statement is still the best I’ve ever read. By far.

“We impart useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way.”

That’s my job.

That should be all our jobs.

Once again in Olde New York.

Yesterday I stumbled upon this footage of Olde New York and, thankfully, it sent me back in time. Like George Bailey in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," I was born old. 

Not as old, of course, as the scenes in the film above, but I've always had a fascination with the past. I guess I'm a natural historian.

I remember as a little boy walking in a weedy field and seeing beneath the weeds the rusted tracks of an abandoned rail-line. It wasn't until the dawn of the internet that I discovered that they were vestiges from the New York, Westchester and Boston railroad which was built between 1844 and 1848.

I also remember seeing beneath the worn asphalt of city streets the still gleaming tracks of bygone trolley lines which used to criss-cross the great city.

When you are getting on in years--as we all are--and you've lived in the Great City your whole life, you see not one city, you see two or three. You see what is, what was and what was before even that. Call it urban Pentimento, painted in steel and brick and concrete and soot.

"With jewels, and with pearls the great city, where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth," the Great City grows on, alive and inexorable, subsuming farm-land and fields, enveloping all that stands in its way.

The great city is Babylon-like--except it still stands. Stands after crime and terror and riots and fire and drugs and disease. The Great City is not, as the Christian Bible portends, desolate in just one hour.

Still I am missing the city I had been in. Missing its ramshackle, missing its danger, and missing its raw intensity and dirt. But of course, I love, too, the city I am in today.

The off camaraderie. The resigned humor. The polyglot of people, tongues, food and laughter.

I gotta go. I've got a trolley to catch or I'll be late for work.

Denigrating the brand.

If you ran a restaurant and some of your entrees were made with the finest cuts and others were made with three-day-old fish, chances are you wouldn't stay in business for long.

If you were a ballplayer, and excellent as a fielder but a rusty gate at bat, you'd never ascend to the heights of stardom.

If you were a writer and some of your sentences were lucid and eloquent and others were meaningless and clunky, you'd never gain success.

Yet, in advertising, we daily engage in a two-tiered system of creative.

We have gleaming brand work--often the work we do for broadcast. Then we have other work--primarily online only, and this is often shrill, cheap and badly-produced.

The second kind of work is often deemed acceptable because, well, budgets are smaller and it is meant to reach a smaller audience.

What, too often, we don't account for is something I call the "denigration cost" of bad work. If a brand is an amalgamation of multiple messages and actions, then a message that cuts against the grain waters down the aggregate of the communication.

If thirty times you said to your better half, "I love you," and nine times you said "I hate you," chances are the relationship would be, at least, strained.

That said it seems to me that most brands do something similar. They're one thing in one channel. Something different in another.

The resulting confusion cancels everything out and leave the brand with little coherent meaning.

The Belgian Congo.

If you ever feel compelled to read a masterful account of the effects of vicious colonialism, you could do worse than pick up Adam Hochschild's 1999 classic, "King Leopold's Ghost."  

The book tells in savage and horrific detail the despoiling of what was then called the Belgian Congo. The land was stripped of riches. The people were enslaved, brutalized and in many cases tortured and killed if they refused to work for their Belgian overlords.

A crusader realized that something rotten was going on when he noticed ships coming into Belgian ports were heavy and laden with rubber and other riches. The ships sat low in the water and took days to offload.

Ships going back to the Congo, however, were a different story. They went to the Congo virtually empty. Yet they came back full.

I think about this this morning when it appears that in the advertising industry we have reached the realization of "peak greed."

I say this on reporting of "outrageous" pay gaps between holding company overlords and the people who are making them wealthy.

Like the rubber trees and natural resources being stripped of their value in the Congo two centuries ago, today our brains are stripped of their vitality. Our health is compromised. Our families are forced to come in second to our labors. 

Meanwhile, our wages aren't just a tiny fraction of that of our chieftains, in fact, I allege that due to their oligopolistic domination of our industry, they've gone backward--going down, not up.

That's all for now.

I can't afford to get fired.

The Zulu Road-Runners. (A repost.)

No time to write today. I'm up in Boston, away from work, watching my eldest daughter run the Boston Marathon. As a tribute to her, a short post from long ago.

The Zulu Road Runners.

When I was a kid, I was lucky enough to spend my summers in a camp for boys in New Hampshire where we could play baseball virtually all day and swim when we were not playing ball.

These were long summer days, far away from the strife that was afflicting America: the Vietnam war, kids taking over college campuses, riots in the cities, drugs virtually everywhere and runaway crime. We spent the summer hearing instead of police sirens, the shooop! of ball into leather and the splash of brave divers in the lake. It was enforced innocence, these days. Where the world was far away. None of us kids knew how lucky we were.

That said, reality often encroached. One of my baseball coaches was a Mickey Mantle-esq figure named Nelson Chase. Chase received a phone call at camp--a rarity in these pre-cellular days. His best friend was killed in Southeast Asia. It was hard to see a coach you idolized crying like a baby. Another coach was Tom Nadeau, who had been a sergeant in Vietnam. Nadeau was like a Doonsebury character, wearing his fatigue shirt with the sleeves cut off to show his biceps over his baseball uniform. Nadeau chewed us teenagers out and exercised us like we were in his platoon. "What's it to you, Tom Nadeau?" he trained us to say. Another coach was a drug-addled pitcher named Andre who had a fastball to die for. He had returned from Vietnam and didn't last at camp long enough--his drug-addled-ness caught up with him--for me to learn his last name.

These encounters with the real world real-world-ized us. We became rebellious, long-haired, surly. In other words, teenagers. Getting away with murder became our reason for being.

There was a small town about four miles away from the camp. There was a grocery store, an ice cream stand and girls in the town, which made it a place we wanted to escape to. Except camp never took us there. We were a self-contained community with no reason to escape from the friendly confines.

Bobby Goldsmith a sinewy outfielder had the idea. "Let's run to town" he posed. "If they think we are doing it for exercise, they'll let us go." So about six of us formed a running club, "The Zulu Road Runners." We began running to and fro around the campus. Running in a pack everywhere we went. We magic markered our t-shirts to read Zulu Road Runners. At the time, we didn't understand that the name of our group might be regarded as offensive. It just seemed to us a tribute to a people with extraordinary distance-running skills.

Eventually, we went to camp authorities and said we needed longer distances to run. We somehow got permission to run to town and back. Which we did, about three times a week. Though sometimes we hitched back instead, the six of us piled in the back of a compliant pickup truck.

We'd get to town and buy a soda or some candy bars. We never met any girls. The main point however was that we beat the system.

We got out.

A bit more on Milton Glaser. Again.

Yesterday I wrote about a new book containing 427 posters designed by Milton Glaser. You can buy the book here. 

Included among those 427 posters is a special section of 100 other posters. (Including one I commissioned when I worked on American Express at a small downtown agency.)

Glaser segregates these 100 as "less successful works that I find not completely satisfying." There are eight "not completely satisfying" examples below.

Two things I like about this.

One, it's good to be honest with yourself. And it's good to judge your own work harshly. It's humble to show work that came up short. 

It shows you're human. Remember humans?

Two, I think showing "not completely satisfying" work is a lesson. Students of the design game can compare, can begin, with diligence to discern the discrepancy between the successful and the less successful. In other words, looking at this section helps a viewer learn to see.

And learning to see is what our business, and life, are really all about.

Thinking about Milton Glaser.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across a notice that a new compendium of Milton Glaser's posters was being published. It would include 427 examples from 1965 to 2017.

I bought it here in two shakes of a lamb's tail. And you should too.

If you're my age, the years of Glaser's work roughly coincide with your dates--from the advent of your awareness to, ahem, the advent of your dotage.

You can, roughly speaking, see your life--from psychedelic Dylan to Glaser's posters today--in hundreds of graphics.

Additionally, to "feel" the book, to hold it, is something to consider. It's something to consider, because everything is
considered, as the pictures below show. Even something as incidental as the color of the edges of pages--who cares, right?--are treated with love and care and artistry.

Of course, Glaser's seminal posters are interesting. You'd expect that--they can be, should be studied. And not just by "creatives." They follow the principles of great communication. They get your attention. They tell you something. And they persuade.

(BTW, to all those people who say "creative can come from anywhere," I'd argue that before you assert your right to have an idea or an opinion, perhaps you should take some time, as I have, as every good creative I know has, to study work, to examine creativity. No one says "aeronautical skills, or surgical skills can come from anywhere." Why is creativity held to a lesser standard?)

Oddly enough, the pages I found most-interesting in Glaser's compendium have no artwork on them. They are his short introduction and the afterword in his book. Maybe they total 500 words.

I liked this a lot:

"Visual practitioners have a curious capacity that most other humans lack; we have a physical record of our lives that, not unlike a scrapbook, can re-evoke our minds' state or beliefs at any point in our passage through life." 

This is true for writers too. Even writers of lowly, disposable blogs.

Here's another bit I dug.

"Design became increasingly more interesting to me. I developed a taste for historicism, and I began to feel that any design could begin with any reference. Around the same time, I learned something from Picasso that once you had mastered something you could give it up. However, while style can be thought of as a form of temporary belief, it can also last a lifetime. One's distinctive neurology persists. I've been surprised by how many times something I thought was a new idea turned out to be an adaptation of a work I started thirty years earlier."

Finally, I liked this. And in liking it, I thank the good clients I have who allow me to be good.

"Good work can only be made for good clients."

Do yourself some good.

Buy the book. And study.

Craeft. (Craft.)

Not too long ago I read a book called "Craeft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts" by British author Alexander Langlands. You can buy the book here and read "The New York Times" review here.

The book is a thorough examination of the old ways of doing things. Of building walls, of thatching roofs, of sowing grain, of clearing fields.

Langlands doesn't just theorize. He learns the old ways and uses them in his projects. 

This would be like us in advertising cutting a commercial on a moviola or creating a print ad using lead type and board mechanicals.

Most of us would roll our eyes at this prospect. We would mutter under our breaths, or aloud if no one was listening, that the old ways would be a horrible burden, horribly time-consuming and horribly costly.

Langlands starts his book scything a field. As a rootless cosmopolitan, I've never had the pleasure, of tough "Cool Hand Luke" labor. But Langlands, brilliantly in my mind, breaks down the old way and compares it to the modern mode.

It turns out, according the Langlands, the new modern ways are not much more efficient than the scorned antique ways.

For one, the new ways use complicated extractive technologies and run on fossil fuels. Second, they generally make no physical demands on the user--so current incidence of diseases like diabetes, obesity and heart problems are, today, endemic. Third, you also have the burden of buying, maintaining and storing complex machinery.

I wonder in our business if modernity--the instantaneousness of every one of our traditional skills has really sped things up--as claimed by the makers of the technologies we are beholden to, or if instead, we have slowed processes down.

They're slowed down because technology creates the illusion of simplicity. It's easy to type something, lay it into In-design and you've got an ad. So we make revisions willy-nilly and approvals and changes number in the dozens if not more. Why? Because we can.

In short, we have forgotten the craft of our craft. We have let the illusion of facility and simplicity drain our creativity and turn us into extensions of the machines we operate. We are art-direction machines, or Bartleby-like scriveners (except we can't prefer not to) or editing monkeys churning out rips instead of crafting ideas.

No solution here.

We're not going back to hot-type or the Steenbeck machine. 

But we should go back--it should be part of everyone's training--to understanding that what we do, what we make look so easy, is all part of a process, an accumulation of learning that is generations, if not centuries old.

--

You might want to take a look at this short video of the great designer Herb Lubalin. Somehow I find it relevant here.

They don't make anything.

I know it's very Luddite of me to attempt to make corporeal today's finance-driven, data-demolished world. Maybe because I was raised by parents deeply-scarred by the Depression, but at the end of the day, I like to see what I made.

Admittedly, what I made hasn't added up to a fortune. But that's ok. Again, it could be the sentimentalist in me, but I take pride and succor in writing an ad, in creating a commercial. Even a lowly banner ad, the butt of more jokes than Henny Youngman's wife, I take pride in. If I were a carpenter, I'd be planing the wood to a velvet softness, dovetailing the joints and making, at least, a thing that functions, at most, something that is a joy to look at.

Since the news of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook broke, people have been fulminating and breathing through their mouths about the wholesaling of their privacy. 

How did they think Zuckerberg and Company were getting rich? 

I checked this morning and Facebook's market cap is a staggering $461 billion. That makes it more valuable than nine General Motors or 11 Coca-Colas.

When it comes to Facebook, I always did a little math in my head. Accurate or not, the whole picture or half, naive or wise, it made sense to me.

I divide Facebook's market cap by the number of their users. For the sake of easy math, let's round up their 1.8 billion users to 2 billion. So divide their market cap, $461 billion by 2 billion and you have $230.50.

By my calculation that's how much Facebook are selling your data for. They're making over $200/user selling user-data.

Someone smart can come along now and refute my math and the components of my calculation. I welcome the discussion. And I could use a good comeuppance. In reality, who couldn't.

It's folly to think of Facebook as "free" or benign. It's folly to believe in companies doing something for nothing. As my Yiddesche mama would spit, "You don't get rich giving things away."

There's no doubt why Facebook considers its customers users.

We've been used.

--
And now some words from the cheery neo-Fascist "Wall Street Journal."

How Pizza Night Can Cost More in Data Than Dollars

Even a low-key evening at home can mean handing over a trove of personal information to high-tech companies

By Stephanie Stamm, Tripp Mickle and Jessica Kuronen

Published April 10, 2018 at 5:30 a.m. ET

The smartphones, Facebook accounts and other technology products deeply embedded in modern life help people get more things done every day. They also gather more information about us than we often realize.

But Facebook's crisis over how it handles and protect user data has led some to ask: What data am I giving up?

Imagine “Sally” sets up a pizza-and-movie night with her friend “Kristen.” The Wall Street Journal reviewed privacy statements to assess just how much data could be unknowingly shared on top of the price of that pepperoni pie.

The Plan

Sally pulls out her iPhone X and exchanges some texts with Kristen.

Sally and Kristen are using Apple iMessage to text. The messages are encrypted, so that Apple never sees the words exchanged.

As messages are sent, Apple captures and analyzes anonymous metadata, such as time stamps, so it can be used to ensure servers have sufficient bandwidth for future traffic, for example.

DATA PROVIDED

APPLE

 End-to-end encrypted text

 iMessage address information

ADDITIONAL DATA COLLECTED

APPLE

 Anonymized time stamps

 Anonymized message routing information

The Order

As Kristen cleans up her apartment, she turns to her Amazon Echo: “Alexa, open Domino's and place an order.”

The Domino's app installed on the Echo pulls up Kristen’s stored credit-card information. "Do you want to use your Visa ending in 1234?” Alexa asks.

The stored credit-card information is used to complete the pizza purchase. Alexa also logs the interaction, and Domino’s creates a transcript of what she said.

DATA PROVIDED

ALEXA

Voice characteristics

Content of request

DOMINO'S

Payment and billing information

Type of pizza ordered

Quanity of order

ADDITIONAL DATA COLLECTED

ALEXA

 Interaction history

 Type of Echo device

 Location

 Last four digits of credit card

DOMINO'S

 Transcript of what she said

 Hardware settings

 Operating system

 Performance statistics

The Trip

Sally jumps in her car and pulls up Google Maps on her iPhone to get directions to Kristen’s place. The app uses iPhone sensors to determine her location as she travels, tapping into the accelerometer for speed and the gyroscope for direction.

Google collects anonymous bits of data on her speed and location, as well as that of nearby drivers, to detect if there’s heavy traffic.

DATA PROVIDED

GOOGLE

 Address of her destination

 Location

ADDITIONAL DATA COLLECTED

GOOGLE

 Speed

 Cardinal direction of travel

 Device type (iPhone X)

 IP address assigned to device

 Closest Wi-Fi routers

 Closest cell towers

The Selfie

Sally and Kristen haven’t hung out in forever, so Sally suggests taking a selfie.

After Sally uploads the photo to Facebook, the app suggests she tag Kristen based on its facial-recognition system, which Kristen has given permission to use.

Facebook could collect Sally’s location based on the IP address used to upload the photo, which it could use to suggest local events that might interest her or show her ads targeted at people near a specific place. Its system also analyzes the photo as it does with all images to make sure there’s no inappropriate content.

DATA PROVIDED

FACEBOOK

 Uploaded photo

 Text submitted with photo

 Facial recognition

ADDITIONAL DATA COLLECTED

FACEBOOK

 Photo analysis

 Location of the photo (if included in metadata)

 Date

 Type of device (iPhone X)

 Device ID

 Device operating system

 Battery level

 Signal strength

 Bluetooth signal

 Connection speed

 Available storage

 App and file names and types

 Nearby Wi-Fi beacons and cell towers

 Nearby devices such as a TV for phone-to-TV streaming

 Time zone

 Mobile operator or internet service provider

 IP address

 Time, frequency and duration of activities

 Hardware version

 Software version

The Movie

Kristen turns on her Apple TV and searches for “Wonder Woman.” They purchase the movie. Apple could later suggest other movies Kristen should buy, such as “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” By default, Apple offers personalized recommendations, but users can turn off that setting.

In the process, Apple checks Kristen’s Apple ID and charges her stored credit-card information. It also uses internet-bandwidth information to make sure the movie downloads at the appropriate speed.

DATA PROVIDED

APPLE

 Movie selected

 Apple ID

 Credit card information

ADDITIONAL DATA COLLECTED

APPLE

 Internet bandwidth information

 Purchase history

The Cost in Data

Sally and Kristen potentially gave up at least 53 pieces of information together. The data detailed in the scenario reflect information the companies could collect according to their privacy statements, terms of service and related documents.

Data points collected in this scenario

15 are user-provided (28%)

23 items

come from

Facebook

38 are company-collected (72%)

Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Domino’s privacy policies collectively total 76,069 words. At an average reading speed of 250 words a minute, it would take someone more than five hours to read all the policies reviewed for Sally and Kristen’s scenario.

"Users have lost sight of what they give up and that's through no fault of their own,” said Gennie Gebhart, a researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group.

The companies generally handle data differently and use them for different reasons. Apple, for example, often disassociates information from users and uses it primarily to improve devices. Facebook and Google primarily use data to improve services and support their advertising businesses.

What Else Is in the Privacy Policies

The information handed over by Sally and Kristen are only a few of the pieces of data the biggest tech companies have the ability to collect, according to their privacy policies. Below is a list of some, but not all, of the kinds of data that could be gathered.

User-Provided Data 

Company-Collected Data

AMAZON

ENTERING INFORMATION ON WEBSITE Name Phone Number Mailing Address Credit Card InformationPeople's Names to Whom Purchases Have Been Shipped People's Addresses to Whom Purchases Have Been ShippedPeople's Phone Numbers to Whom Purchases Have Been Shipped Friend's Email Addresses Content of ReviewsContent of Emails to the Company ‘Your Profile’ Personal Description ‘Your Profile’ Photograph Social Security NumberDriver's License Number Login Email Address Password Purchase History Products Viewed, Searched For IP AddressTime Zone Browser Type Browser Version Browser Plugins Operating System Clickstream DataPhone Number Used to Call Company Opened an Email From Company Page Response Times Download Errors Length of VisitsPage Interaction (Scrolls, Clicks, Mouse-Overs) Methods Used to Browse Away From Page APP USE Location Device IdentifiersALEXA-SPECIFIC Name Phone Number Contact Details To-Do, Shopping Lists Music PlaylistsDefault Payment Information Default Shipping Information Voice Characteristics Mobile Phone Contacts, If ImportedContent of Requests Interaction History Types of Purchases Zip Code If You Ask For Weather 'Skill' Custom Music StationsAuxiliary Product Information Smart Home Device Type Smart Home Device Name Smart Home Device FeaturesSmart Home Device Status Smart Home Device Network Connectivity Smart Home Device Location Voice MessagesContact Communicated With the Most

AMAZON SAYS

“Our privacy notice describes what information we collect and how we use it. We never sell our customers’ personal information. We encrypt data in transit and at rest, as well as offer customer the ability to turn on multi-factor authentication.”

APPLE

CREATE APPLE ID, MAKE PURCHASE, ETC. Name Mailing Address Phone Number Email Address Contact PreferencesCredit Card Information Date of Birth USE OF SERVICE/DEVICE Location Occupation App Store ActivitiesServices Search Queries Phone Carrier Language Country Zip Code Area Code Operating System Browser TypeInternet Service Provider Referrer URL Unique Device Identifier Time Zone IP Address Opened an Email From AppleFriend or Family Names Friend or Family Mailing Address Friend or Family Emails Friend or Family Phone Numbers APPLE MEDIA SERVICES Home Country Payment Method Apple ID Device Activity Location Usage

APPLE SAYS

The company doesn’t believe companies should build detailed profiles of customers. It often disassociates information from users and uses it to improve the devices it sells but doesn’t sell personal information to advertisers.

DOMINO’S

REGISTERED USER Name Mailing Address Phone Number Email Address Billing Information Areas of InterestProduct Usage Credit Card Information Password TRANSACTIONS Location Nature of Purchase Quantity of PurchasePrice of Purchase Transcript of Words Spoken Individuals, Entities Communicated With For Transaction USING THE SERVICESecondary Communications, Background Noise Device Identifier Device Type Operating System Browser TypeHardware Settings Performance Statistics Server Name IP Address Internet Service Provider General Geographic InformationDate and Time Site Accessed Pages Accessed Within Site or App Referral URL Exit URL Transaction History Installed FontsJavascript Objects Content of Social Media Post If Using Domino's Hashtag

DOMINO'S SAYS

“Any customer information we collect in a digital order is used to fulfill the order or to improve the customer experience.”

FACEBOOK

USING THE SERVICE Name Email Address Shared Content Viewed Content Type of Content Engaged WithContent Commented On Messages and Communications With Others Connections to Friends, Groups, Accounts and HashtagsLife Events Religious Views Political Views Who You Are "Interested In" Health Racial or Ethnic Origin Philosophical BeliefsTrade Union Membership Address Book ("If You Choose To Upload, Sync or Import It")Call Log ("If You Choose To Upload, Sync or Import It") SMS Log History ("If You Choose To Upload, Sync or Import It") Contact DetailsPayment Information Shipping Information Mobile Phone Number Precise Device Location Uploaded Photos, VideosFacial Recognition Device Settings Messenger Communication Actions on FacebookInteractions With Friends, Groups, Accounts and Hashtags Features Used When You're Using Facebook ProductsWhen You Last Used Facebook Products Location of a Photo (like metadata) Date Time, Frequency and Duration of ActivitiesOperating System Hardware Version Software Version Battery Level Signal Strength Available Storage Browser TypeApp and File Names and Types Plugins Device Behavior (Mouse Movements, Windows in Foreground or Background) Device IDDevice You Use Bluetooth Signal Nearby Wi-Fi, Beacons and Cell Towers Mobile Operator Internet Service Provider LanguageTime Zone IP Address Connection Speed Nearby Devices Such as a TV for Phone-to-tv Streaming Purchases DonationsServices Used Activity Off Facebook Including Websites Visited, Purchases Made, Ads Viewed and Services UsedOnline and Offline Actions From Third-Party Data Providers Instagram Activity Where You Live Places You GoBusinesses You're Near People You're Near Events Attended Friends' Comments About You Friends' Messages To YouFriends' Contact Information For You Friends' Photos of You Facebook Search Queries

FACEBOOK SAYS

“We’ve heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find, and that we must do more to keep people informed.”

GOOGLE

SIGN UP FOR ACCOUNT Name Password Login Email Address Phone Number ‘Your Profile’ Photo GenderDate of Birth Country USING THE SERVICE Language Preferences Analysis of Interactions with Google ServicesCredit Card Information Contacts Reviews You Write Comments You Post Location Location History Map SearchesTraveling Speed Direction of Travel Voice Search Content Photo and Video Uploads Date and Time Photos, Videos TakenLocation Information of Photos, Videos Age (confirmed through credit card transaction) Browsing History Date and Time of QuerySearch History Frequency of Visits Ads Viewed, Engaged Categories Interested In Gmail Messages Gchat MessagesFacial Recognition Google Drive Content (i.e. docs) YouTube Watch History Calling-Party Phone Number Forwarding NumbersCall History Recorded Conversations Time and Date of Calls Voicemail Messages Voicemail Greetings Duration of CallsTypes of Calls SMS Routing Information IP Address Mobile Network Information Operating System Hardware ModelDevice Identifiers Hardware Settings Crash Report Browser Type Bookmarks Installed Extensions Open Browser TabsReferrer URL Calendar Events Login Locations Date and Time of Request Contacts Shared With the MostLinked IP Addresses to URLs Visited Record of Website Downloads Strength of Wi-Fi or Cell Signal

GOOGLE SAYS

“In order to make the privacy choices that are right for them, it's essential that people can understand and control their Google data. Over the years, we've developed tools like My Account expressly for this purpose, and we'd encourage everyone to review it regularly.”