DoubleClick Taken to Court

AdemoN was the first to the gate with the latest on the DoubleClick privacy fiasco. A woman in California has sued DoubleClick, alleging that they have violated her privacy rights by representing themselves as not collecting personal information, while actually doing so. Remember - you can opt-out of the whole thing as well. Click below for a note on a major PR blunder by DoubleClick from Roblimo.

- Friday, January 28, 2 p.m. US EST

Tuesday USA Today reporter Will Rodger wrote about DoubleClick. We linked to his story here. Wednesday afternoon a DoubleClick Corporate Communications person* called Andover.net Corporate Communications VP Janet Holian and asked her to remove our story and the link to USA Today.

Janet passed the problem to me, since Andover has a very strict policy prohibiting Andover corporate people from interfering in editorial decisions.

I listened politely to the DoubleClick person, who told me USA Today's story was innacurate and we were wrong to link to it, and how she was calling journalists all over the country to tell them that the information in it was false and should not be relied upon. Then she requested that we pull the Slashdot story that linked to the USA Today story. No direct threats were made, but the words "refer this to our legal department" were said.

I said no, we couldn't and wouldn't pull the story.

Next move: I called USA Today. These guys are good fact-checkers. They pointed me at some of DoubleClick's own press releases and privacy policy pages, most of which had already been referenced by Slashdot in this story back in October, 1999.

An Open Offer
I offered DoubleClick's Corporate Communications person a chance to state their side of the story here, on Slashdot. I promised to run whatever they sent verbatim. I have received nothing from them so far. I called DoubleClick and reiterated the offer before writing this. Still nothing, not even an e-mail saying what information they feel is incorrect in any of the stories written about them here, in USA Today or in other media.

At this point, it's DoubleClick's move. Perhaps, eventually, they'll post something on their Press Release page. We'll keep an eye on it in case they do.

* I left out the name of the DoubleClick Corporate Communications person purely as a personal courtesy. She is a very nice woman in a bad position, trying to do a very tough job - which, right now, could probably best be described as "frantic damage control."

Comments

Better way

[Otto]

Someone else posted this a while back, but here's what I did.. very simple.

Add this to /etc/hosts (or in windows, find the "hosts" file under your windows directory):

127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.preferences.com
127.0.0.1 ad.washingtonpost.com
127.0.0.1 adbot.theonion.com
127.0.0.1 adpick.switchboard.com
127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ads.i33.com
127.0.0.1 ads.infospace.com
127.0.0.1 ads.msn.com
127.0.0.1 ads.switchboard.com
127.0.0.1 ads.washingtonpost.com

That removes quite a lot of ads, and all of doubleclick.

---

Might be time for a law or two, here

[DragonHawk]

This is all well and good, but don't the Pentium IIIs have a "thumbprint" that allows for them to see what we're doing?

You got a network card in your system? That has a "thumbprint" too. The MAC address.

You got any commercial software (e.g., Windows) on your system that you had to enter a software key to use? There's another "thumbprint" for you.

How about a static IP address? Ever time you send a network request, you're identifying yourself.

You think you're safe because you have a dynamic address? Do you at least always call the same ISP at the same phone number? You'll always be getting the same range of IP numbers, then. You and maybe a few dozen or hundred more people. That is almost as good as a unique personal ID, as far as demographics go.

Fact of the matter is, tracking a computer is not that hard to do. If you ever give out any personal information at all (name, email, phone number, ZIP code), that can be combined with any of the above to nail down exactly who you are.

I think Scott McNeally's right on this one. Privacy on the Internet is dead.

The only way to improve things would be for the government to step in and make such unauthorized tracking illegal, with hefty fines for violators. You could even do some good by donating said fines to the EFF.

Re:Everyone use the same cookie?

[dodobh]

Hers my cookie. Dialup with dynamic i/p, so I don't mind.
.doubleclick.net TRUE / FALSE 1920499140 id a486b3cd