Opting out of targeted ads too hard, privacy advocates say
Submitted: June 4, 2009 - 7:25am
Last updated: June 4, 2009 - 7:26am
Last updated: June 4, 2009 - 7:26am
Source:
IDG News Service
Author:
Grant Gross
The online advertising industry and U.S. policy makers need to give online users more control over the collection of personal data and surfing habits beyond the traditional opt-out approach, some privacy advocates said Wednesday. Dozens of online ad networks allow users to opt out of being tracked as a way to deliver behavioral advertising, and in most cases, the opt-out is stored in a cookie that goes away every time the users clear their browser cookies, privacy advocates said during a discussion of online advertising at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference. Privacy advocate Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, called on the FTC and Congress to take action to protect U.S. consumers. Online ad companies are now researching neuroscience as a way to target users' on a subconscious level, he said.
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Comments
The Industry Standard article contains this quote, which is incorrect.
"[A]bout 30 ad networks, delivering around 90 percent of all online ads, are members of the Network Advertising Initiative, which offers a single opt-out cookie, Zaneis said."
There is not one single cookie. The Opt-Out actually makes calls to servers for each company listed. http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp
Each web site then creates or edits a cookie from its domain that tells it the user has opted-out. You can see this in action if you use the Live HTTP Headers Firefox extension http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/
An opt-in would be economically disastrous to ad networks and free Internet services relied upon by most people; however, the current opt-out system does need to be changed. Between the two lies a compromise. I think that solution lies with a browser-based standard that let's a visitor opt-out from the browser. An ad network would identify itself in the HTTP headers as a company that uses behavioral advertising. The browser from which a user opted out would respond, also in HTTP headers, the user's choice. This is similar to how P3P operates but would be much more simple.