Information & Ethics Committee on Dec. 6th, 2012

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

There are 500 million people and 1,500 data points of information per person. That's what we're being told. You have sales of $1.13 billion.

I just want to clarify. Are you gathering the kind of general information on Canadian citizens you would gather on American citizens? When I look at 500 million people, that's the size of continental North America. How much Canadian data is in there?

[Jennifer Barrett Glasgow]

We only have Canadian data from the telephone directories I described in my opening remarks. The 500 million names represent our worldwide consumption. Acxiom has offices in Europe, the U.S., Latin America, and Asia.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

It's telephone data. Okay, thank you.

I'm looking at some of the briefs I have read on various big data companies. I'm certainly not saying that Acxiom is a bad player, but there have been some examples of problems. We're trying to get our heads around what big data does.

If we have 1,500 points of data on individuals, that would seem to be a lot of information. The data brokers collect general land title information, birth records, licences, court records, telephone directories, and non-public information that can come from loyalty card purchasing histories, consumer surveys, warranty restrictions, and information from magazine subscriptions. Then, through cookies, they are able to track browser use on the Internet. Would Acxiom be doing that with U.S. consumers?

[Jennifer Barrett Glasgow]

In the U.S., not in Canada, we collect data from all of those sources, except for browsing data. We do not collect cookie data that tracks the browser history of individuals.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I'm pleased to hear that, because I find it personally to be very disturbing. I sometimes try to go on a website, and because I like to have my cookies turned off, I am told that I can't access it unless the cookies are on. That somebody would be gathering information on my browsing data I would find very disturbing. I am pleased to see that Acxiom doesn't do that.

Are you looking to expand the data sets you have on Canadians, or are you going to stick with the telephone directory?

[Jennifer Barrett Glasgow]

The telephone directories have been our offering in Canada for over a decade. We don't have any plans to expand that. The market is not a large market for us, so our focus has been elsewhere.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you for that.

Within our privacy regime—and we're looking at possible changes to our privacy regime to protect data—the question of breaches is enormous. There have been some pretty dramatic examples. We found out that in 2005, ChoicePoint sold the information of 160,000 people to an identity-theft ring. In 2004, the same company was involved in a breach of the data of over 128,000 citizens.

What does Acxiom do to protect personal data? I'm sure that you have pretty strong firewalls. Have you had breaches? What happens in the case of these breaches?

[Jennifer Barrett Glasgow]

We have a very strong commitment to security, not so much for our data business, but for our services business. We host and provide marketing services to a lot of regulated industries, such as financial services and health care. As a result of that, those industries audit our security practices regularly. We have over 80 outside customer audits a year. Then, of course, we do our own audits. We're always testing our security, always upgrading our security, because we take data breaches very seriously.

I would say that we have the normal kinds of situations that most companies do, with lost laptops, but we have a very strong encryption policy where all data that is in removable form is on an encrypted device. We minimize the risk when an employee has a device that's lost or stolen.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Again, with the data points, your catalogue is pretty impressive in terms of what you can offer clients who are gathering information on all manner of ethnicity, gender, neighbourhood.

The rules may be different in Canada, but in terms of the ability to actually target by race and ethnicity, have you had any questions from the FTC about the appropriateness of that?

[Jennifer Barrett Glasgow]

Well, there are certain industries that by law are barred from targeting by race or ethnicity. Financial services happens to be one of those. But for other industries, particularly consumer product industries—for example, cosmetics, which are developed specifically for some ethnicities—there's actually a consumer benefit to target. It does vary from industry to industry.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

For your clients, people who are wanting to sell products, it makes sense that they're going to want to know who is in certain markets. Can individuals buy data?

[Jennifer Barrett Glasgow]

No, we do not sell to individuals, we sell only to qualified businesses. We carefully screen all of our clients before we sell any products to them to make sure that they are a legitimate business and that they have a legitimate name for the data they're specifically requesting.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Unfortunately, your time is up, Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Ms. Davidson now has the floor for five minutes.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

And thanks very much, Ms. Barrett Glasgow, for joining us this afternoon. We certainly appreciate hearing from you. I think we're getting a different perspective on another part of this study on social media.

You've said that you're a global company; that you certainly follow the rules in all of the countries that you operate in; that you aren't in Canada physically, that you monitor the Canadian operation through Arkansas; and then you talked about your business in Canada using the phone listings and the 411 listings and so on.

Can you talk about that a little bit more? Just describe to me a bit more what your business is in Canada, and how your business in Canada interacts with social media.

[Jennifer Barrett Glasgow]

The business in Canada is just a telephone directory service. As I said in my opening remarks, it includes public listings, so anyone who's not listed or available through directory assistance would not be found in those directories. Consumers can choose to get out of them. We have the same directory service in the U.S., and we find consumers who don't mind being in a printed telephone directory, but are uncomfortable being in an Internet directory.

Many of the clients we have are actual Internet search engines. When you go to places such as yellowpages.com and so on, you would potentially be searching data that was provided to those search engines by Acxiom. We keep that data updated and refreshed as the directories are updated and republished.

The difference between the Canadian data and the U.S. data is quite substantial. The previous member was just outlining some of the things we do in the U.S., and we do some of those other activities in Europe and in Asia as well, maybe not quite to the extent that we do in the U.S., because that's where the company started.

In terms of interaction with social media for our Canadian business, there really isn't any, unless, from a user standpoint, social media would like to take information they find in a social media account and cross-reference it against a published directory. We don't link data between social media and these directories.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Have you been following the study we're doing or are you aware of the study we're doing?

[Jennifer Barrett Glasgow]

I'm only generally aware of it. I have not been following the details.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Okay. I'm just trying to see how your business relates to our study when we're looking at protection of privacy and social media and so on. I'm hearing from you that you don't necessarily have a connection with social media.

[Jennifer Barrett Glasgow]

I don't really think we do in Canada, and I think that's because of the limited products we offer in Canada. In the U.S. we have products that identify heavy users of social media and what types of social media, such as Twitter or Facebook, an individual might use, but we do not offer those kinds of products in Canada.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

In your opening remarks you talked a bit about removing and opting out or removing and correcting, I believe, if it was a commercial operation?

[Jennifer Barrett Glasgow]

Yes.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Could you just elaborate a bit more on that?