Ms Helen Dixon:

Senator O’Reilly succinctly expressed how the ad tech sector works, as well as how the monetising of personal data operates in attracting advertisers and serving ads on users. There is much talk about whether there should be an alternative model to free Internet services. Inevitably, this would involve accessing services from behind a paywall. Policymakers are looking at all these issues, particularly in the context of the EU e-privacy regulation and whether more services will end up behind paywalls to avoid the tracking of users.

At the moment, users are being tracked in order to offer free Internet services. We have published details online in the past fortnight on how users of the major platforms can use controls and granular settings to ultimately switch off interest-based advertising.