Last Update: Tuesday, May 23, 2006. 2:37pm (AEST)
Junk mail deliverers to 'spy' on households

An Australian marketing company is planning to use its network of
catalogue deliverers to collect information about households that 
will be sold to advertisers.

PMP is giving its walkers global positioning tracking technology, with
the eventual aim of having them feed back information such as whether
fences need painting, and which neighbourhoods have high numbers of
children or pets.

"We would be saying to our walkers in time - not today, but in time 
- that obviously they would be able to collect data for us as they 
walk around the neighbourhood," PMP chief executive Brian Evans said.

"So we could say in a particular suburb there are more houses needing
painting than others, we could say to advertisers: 'Look this is a
prime area for you to look at'."

Mr Evans says the company is not planning to collect personal
information, such as the details of what people are hanging on 
their clothes lines.

"We're not talking about looking at anything personal at all ... 
it's just gathering some basic data that says this is a good area 
for promotion for dog food, for instance," he said.

Privacy fears

The Australian Privacy Foundation is worried by the development.

[...]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200605/s1645382.htm


Cheers, Steve..

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