Doubleclick Clear of FTC Probe

innertruth writes "Cnet has an article about FTC dropping its probe into DoubleClick privacy practices. Without the FCC looking over their sholder now we have to wonder what they really will do with all the information they've collected online and that offline database they now have." The FTC's letter ending their investigation has more information. Keep in mind that the FTC has a very narrow mandate: "Is Doubleclick doing something different than what they say?" So as long as Doubleclick states their practices accurately - whether they are or are not linking the household information from Abacus with the click information from Doubleclick's network - then the FTC's role is ended.

Comments

Read the fine print

[truthsearch]

I think this should just be another reminder to read the fine print on web sites. Don't give out private information unless you read a site's fine print and you're willing to have that information shared with many people.

This goes for offline privacy as well. Don't give out your SS#. If a company asks for your phone number and you they don't really need it, say you don't have a phone...

Re:Read the fine print

[dervish121]

If a company asks for your phone number and you they don't really need it, say you don't have a phone...

I tried that, but they didn't believe me. I finally became so pissed off at her insistance that I hung up.

That was over two weeks ago, and I'm starting to suspect that my pizza isn't on the way...

IP addies?

[British]

What are the domain names, subhosts, etc for doubleclick? I'd like to just opt out completely with a little editing of the hosts file.

Re:IP addies?

[jbridge21]

this gets called from my main firewall init script: (edit for non-IPChains)

#!/bin/sh
#
# /etc/rc.d/ip.blacklist: IP forwarding blacklist script.
#

IPCHAINS=/sbin/ipchains

### doubleclick.net sucks arse
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 63.77.79.192/26 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 63.85.84.0/24 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 63.160.54.0/24 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 63.166.98.0/24 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 63.168.198.0/25 -j REJECT

$IPCHAINS -A output -d 128.11.60.64/26 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 128.11.92.0/24 -j REJECT

$IPCHAINS -A output -d 192.65.80.0/24 -j REJECT

$IPCHAINS -A output -d 199.95.206.0/23 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 199.95.208.0/23 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 199.95.210.0/24 -j REJECT

$IPCHAINS -A output -d 204.94.129.65/32 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 204.176.152.248/28 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 204.176.177.0/24 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 204.178.112.100/32 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 204.178.112.160/27 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 204.186.74.0/24 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 204.253.104.0/23 -j REJECT

$IPCHAINS -A output -d 205.138.3.0/24 -j REJECT

$IPCHAINS -A output -d 206.65.181.96/30 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 206.65.181.104/30 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 206.65.183.0/24 -j REJECT

$IPCHAINS -A output -d 208.10.202.0/24 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 208.32.211.0/24 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 208.184.29.0/24 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 208.203.243.0/24 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 208.211.225.0/24 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 208.228.86.0/24 -j REJECT

$IPCHAINS -A output -d 209.67.38.101/30 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 209.67.38.105/30 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 209.67.38.150/32 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 209.167.73.128/27 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 209.249.231.45/32 -j REJECT

$IPCHAINS -A output -d 216.94.59.64/27 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 216.230.65.64/28 -j REJECT

### msn
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 207.46.188.0/24 -j REJECT

### quova.com
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 63.109.88.104/29 -j REJECT
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 63.102.181.0/24 -j REJECT

### virus junk
# i love you virus
$IPCHAINS -A output -d 199.108.232.1/30 -j REJECT
-----

Re:IP addies?

[Coward, Anonymous]

What are the domain names, subhosts, etc for doubleclick?
$ nslookup doubleclick.net
Server: tenerus.speakeasy.org
Address: 216.231.41.2

Name: doubleclick.net
Address: 199.95.206.201

$ whois 199.95.206.201
[whois.arin.net]
(lameness filter violating stuff was here)
199.92.0.0 - 199.95.255.255
Double Click, Inc. (more lameness filter stuff here)
199.95.206.0 - 199.95.209.255


Looks like doubleclick has 199.95.206.0 - 199.95.209.255.
You may need to add a -h whois.arin.net or @whois.arin.net to your whois commandline.

Re:IP addies?

[jkujawa]

Interesting. You can use whois.arin.net to look up all of the IP blocks owned by a company. I may have to write a perl script that takes these data and creates IPCHAINS rulesets for out of them.

whois -h whois.arin.net "Double Click"

OTP but -- Oh my gawd, what has CNET done???

[Masem]

Well, gee, it's *really* hard to miss their new ads. It only takes up a good 25% of a 1024x768 browser window, and thankfully for 5% of us, uses ActiveX to get the point across.

I guess all those warnings on more intrusive advertizing will be realized now...

Re:OTP but -- Oh my gawd, what has CNET done???

[xjimhb]

My e-mail to their "suggestion" address had a subject line "Your new News format SUCKS SWAMP WATER!" (Yeah, I more or less borrowed the line from a Porky's movie!) I told them the ONLY thing they did right was to use larger type, EVERYTHING else stank. But I didn't see any "ActiveX" (because I'm using Netscape on AIX, ya think?), just one HUMUNGOUS blinking gif.

I suggest that anybody used to the old format take a look and tell them what you think.

My web browser is DoubleClick-free.

[AFCArchvile]

in my /etc/hosts file, I bound ad.doubleclick.net and m.doubleclick.net to 127.0.0.1; therefore, I will never see their stupid banner ads. However, I might have to send DoubleClick a cease-and-desist letter of my own.

Re:My web browser is DoubleClick-free.

[Rude Turnip]

Will your solution block out their cookies as well? I don't care if I see banner ads or not, I just want to keep their cookies off my system.

Re:My web browser is DoubleClick-free.

[QuantumG]

yes it will.

Re:My web browser is DoubleClick-free.

[AFCArchvile]

Hell no, that's not all of them. Each time I see a banner ad, I find out the URL of the .gif file, and I add the server's name to hosts as 127.0.0.1

I wonder...

[WickedClean]

How much did Doubleclick have to pay the FTC to drop the probe? Hmmmm...maybe somebody at doubleclick used their privacy violation skills to dig up some pics of the FTC director's wife with a 12 year old Guatamalan boy.

Re:I wonder...

[Rude Turnip]

Worse yet, the FTC director, himself, with above said boy.

FTC has no power (yet) regarding privacy

[Masem]

As the summary of the articles suggests, all the FTC can do is say if DoubleClick and Abacus were legal in aggregating information. As of this time, the US Congress has not given the FTC any power to restrict or hound companies that do not violate privacy rights, save in the case that if promise the user one thing and do another (the classic toysmart.com case) then they can step in, but only under the guise of untruthful business practices.

Now, if we DO get a privacy bill, I would suspect that it would give the FTC the power to say where to draw the line at collecting personal information and/or aggregating it. If we had such a bill now, I would have expected that the FTC would have come down hard on DoubleClick. Fortunately, privacy may be an issue with the Dubya adminstration, so we might see such a bill soon.

Is online info really worth as much these days?

[Urban Existentialist]

It seems to me that identity is fluid and changing in the age of the Internet, far more than it ever was. Who is the real me? Everyone has multiple personas that they use online, and in real life. 21st century man has dropped all principles and ideas of identity, and can morph himself to fit the prevailing prejudices of society.

People fluidly move between jobs, bank accounts, homes, towns, cities, countries. The online experience is even more ill defined and structureless. I would wager that the information collected by doubleclick, while disturbing, is not really such an invasion of privacy, for they are not invading the privacy of real people, but merely our avatars.

The modern fluid identity provides information easily, but that information is false in a very short time.

You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-

Re:Is online info really worth as much these days?

[jafac]

I don't know, I started out this Jafac identity as "Just Another Fucking Anonymous Coward". After a while (150 karma points later), I decided I wanted to stick with this persona.

I don't read Jafac's spam.

FUD and Doubleclick

[Metal Machine Music]

I always hear things about how evil Doubleclick are. For example, I run a website with advertising from Doubleclick. I have received a lot of flames from readers of the site about how evil they are, but I just can't see it myself.

What are the allegations against them?

That they collect data on customers in order to target advertising at them.

Wow! I mean big whoop.

This is not evil. If I get an ad targeted to me I'm pleased - I'd far rather have an advert for a nice geek product than one of these untargeted plastic pearl ads.

So then what's the problem. The sum total of the evil is that you get good ads. This is not bad. I like buying things off the internet because it's cheap and convenient, and if I get a good offer I'm pleased.

Furthermore, this means things are cheaper for you, which is also good, because companies spend less on advertising and sell more because of the targeting.

Even if you do object to good offers then you should be used to companies monitoring you because *get this* it happens already! Everything you buy, those store cards, and even the man interviewing you in the street goes to data organizations. People make such a fuss just because the internet's involved. Do you notice polling organizations getting investigated?

Of course not. This information's not even personal. It's information about people, not you.

Still further, lest you forget, you're not just having these people coming into your house and spying on you. It's not like that. You give the information voluntarily - you don't have to go to these sites.

Finally, what do you think would happen without this? Do you think the journalists on these ad-funded sites live on air? Of course they don't. It's time people realize that things have to be paid for - and unless you want to pay for the sites you visit, you better realize how good you got it - getting an improved consumer experience, cheaper products and free journalism. Sometimes I think these people don't like the internet, because they're doing a lot to kill it by trying to stop these sites funding themselves.

Re:FUD and Doubleclick

[Todd Knarr]

The problem is that Doubleclick has information about exactly which pages containing Doubleclick ads you visited, in what order and at exactly what time. They now have a way to link that trail to you personally, not as just a unique user ID but to your name, address and phone number. Would you like the idea of anyone willing to pay being able to, for example, get a list of which addresses you visited when, which books and magazines and videotapes and other products you looked at on the shelves, and so on?

Re:FUD and Doubleclick

[Tackhead]

> Everything you buy, those store cards, and even the man interviewing you in the street goes to data organizations.

When I buy things, I can use cash. I do.

When I'm given a "warranty registration card", I can throw it away. I do.

When I walk into a grocery store, I can buy things without using the grocery card. I do.

When the man in the street asks me to take a survey, I can ignore him. I do.

When Doublelick tries to serve me an ad to track what web sites I view - be they pr0n or news, Slashdot or microsoft.com - I can firewall them.

I do, and I will.

The problem with Doubleclick is that the Average Joe knows something about how he's being tracked by all those other forms of demographic data harvesting. He generally does not know that Doublelick wants to file his name against "into sheep pr0n, Natalie Portman and gr1tz."

Doubleclick isn't a threat to be because I have their IP blocks firewalled. (w00h00, all g0atz, all da time, and Doubleclick don't know sheeeeit! Carnivore's another matter ;-) But they remain a threat to the privacy of the Average Joe.

> unless you want to pay for the sites you visit, you better realize how good you got it - getting an improved consumer experience, cheaper products and free journalism.

Advertising does not improve my consumer experience. Nor, in my experience, do links between news sites and advertisers increase the quality of the journalism I read. If anything, there's a negative correlation; in general (both online and on TV), the more reliant the editor is on advertising, the less trustworthy the journalism.

Re:FUD and Doubleclick

[iso]

They now have a way to link that trail to you personally, not as just a unique user ID but to your name, address and phone number.

bullshit! where are they getting your name, address and phone number? Doubleclick tracks you by a number, and that's it. this is hardly an invasion of privacy, it's market research!

i agree with the original poster: i would much prefer targeted avertising than random advertising. advertisers are more likely to get the impressions they want and consumers are more likely to get the advertising that will interest them. advertising is not inherently evil, despite what some people here are inferring, and neither is market research.

i've read Doubleclick's terms of service and they seem quite reasonable: they're in the business of market research, and sell their database to advertisers. now that the FTC has assured us that they're doing nothing outside of their terms of service, i'm completely satisfied.

- j

Re:FUD and Doubleclick

[interiot]

1) They're not up-front and completely open about it. Most people (esp. non-geeks) have certain expectations when dealing with banner ads, and doubleclick does something more, without informing them. While not illegal, people like it a lot more when companies refrain doing unexpected things to them.

2) The privacy intrusions aren't equitable. In other words, they get to see 10% more of what we do, but we don't get to see 10% more of what they do. This is one proposed standard that I've seen for deciding if a privacy intrusion is acceptable, and it scales nicely to the Transparent Society. But in the monetary sense, it might be equitable, in that the site gets money for violating your privacy, and in turn, you get more costly services for free. *shrug*

3) They've tried to make the information personally identifiable before, so why should we trust them with our data? I expect that soon, a company will emerge that will properly anonymize such information and still target ads, and will eventually be accepted by the public as a good thing (in that companies can respond to desires more quickly, so consumers get what they want faster). Such a company will have to do everything possible to make sure that its end users trust that company, because the collected data is more easily abused than most. Doubleclick has done just the opposite.
--

Re:FUD and Doubleclick

[dervish121]

Everything you buy, those store cards, and even the man interviewing you in the street goes to data organizations. People make such a fuss just because the internet's involved. Do you notice polling organizations getting investigated?

dot dot dot

Still further, lest you forget, you're not just having these people coming into your house and spying on you. It's not like that. You give the information voluntarily - you don't have to go to these sites.



You don't find out until after you visit the site, not before. There's not much difference between this and catching someone rummaging through your garbage; after all, you didn't have to put your garbage out and risk having someone look through it, you could just live in your own filth. Ok, I do live in my own filth, but not because I don't want a flawed internet "business" trying to determine whether that brown paper bag held takeout or a mail-order dildo[1], I live in my own filth because I'm a lazy pig.

In any case, it's still not even very good market research. "Targetted internet advertising" means that if you ever, even once[2], visit a porn site, 99% of your banners will contain some combination of the words gaping, yawning, fisting and holes.

As for the cost of sites... well, most sites cost about what they're worth, and the fact that people don't want to pay anything more than nothing, not even the mildly discomforting thought that doubleclick might know that you clicked on a link to the ripped apart anus site before looking up a few bible verses to clear the cache, should maybe serve as a wake up call to the internet "journalist". That being said, I wouldn't want to appear to be discouraging a mass movement to subscription-based services; the ensuing carnage would be hilarious (although the increased load would probably kill fuckedcompany).

[1] The answer, of course, is both.

[2] Or repeatedly, while spanking like a zoo monkey.

I like footnotes.

Re:FUD and Doubleclick

[Tuzanor]

bullshit! where are they getting your name, address and phone number? Doubleclick tracks you by a number, and that's it. this is hardly an invasion of privacy, it's market research!

Don't be so sure about that. Have you ever entered you name in a form at all EVER on the internet? or how about your credit card number? All they have to do is have a partnership with Amazon.com or eBay and they can match cookies with information you give out. And they do do it(i'm not sure if they actually do with amazon or ebay...but you get the idea).

That's why i've banned doubleclick and many other IP blocks of advertisers(and gotase.cx) at the firewall level. If my name could actually never be matched up, i would have no problem with them knowing that much about me. But i don't feel comfortable letting some company get that much information about me without my permission. And considering how much time i spend online, that is A LOT of info.

Re:FUD and Doubleclick

[MadAhab]

Bullshit? The problem is that their terms _used_ to say they were only collecting aggregate information, not that you get any notice of this when you see their ad, and then they planned on using the Abacus database to correlate their information with real names and addresses.

There are a lot of things involving purchases that include your name and other info in query strings. This is a nasty bait-and-switch and downright dishonest.

On the othe hand, it isn't such a big deal. I'm already getting junk mail related to purchases I make in the offline world. Furthermore, considering the flaky connection between browser cookies and actual users, I think they will find it harder to sustain the big claims they (and the rest of the internet advertising industry) are making about their ability to target individuals and their interests. I give the industry two years before they change their methodology to some scientific-sounding term to dress up the fact that you can't really correlate the data they get to real individuals the way most people outside the industry seem to think. They'll call it a "psychographic cyber map" or something and their stock will go up for a while and lots of executives will give them big contracts. Big whoop.

Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

Does it strike anyone...

[RareHeintz]

...as an odd coincidence (or at least as a dark omen) that less than a week after Baby Bush was installed in the Oval Office, the FTC coughs up a decision this friendly to a shitsack business interest? Maybe one really has nothing to do with the other, but it's hard not to infer a correlation.

Just my US$2e-02.

OK,
- B
--

Re:Does it strike anyone...

[QuantumG]

Have you noticed recently that the price of coke has gone up and the number of fights breaking out on Jerry Springer has increased?! Maybe one really has nothing to do with the other, but it's hard not to infer a correlation. I tell ya man, you should be a psychologist with the complete lack of scientific skepticism that you show before drawing correlations.

Re:Does it strike anyone...

[RareHeintz]

Well, unlike your oh-so-carefully-constructed example, there could actually be a cause and effect. Our new Nitwit-in-Chief has control over appointments at the FTC, and with a cudgel like that can probably pretty much get them to behave as he pleases. Given that his party is generally the more friendly of the two toward predatory businesses, it doesn't seem so far out.

I tell ya man, you should be a television critic with the complete lack of depth with which you view something before deciding to attack it...

OK,
- B
--

Re:Does it strike anyone...

[QuantumG]

oh wait.. so you're not just noticing a correlation, you're actually claiming causation too! Wow, you must have some serious evidence to back this up. It is a well known fact that more coke is drunk during Jerry Springer than any other television show and that said television show is a lot more popular when there are fights. So, obviously, there has to be a causation here. Could it possibly be that the FTC just didn't have anything to pin on doubleclick because they hired a shitload of lawyers to construct their privacy policy and make sure that their business practices conform to the letter of the law? Isn't this just a little bit more plausible?! After all, dubya has been in office a week now? Has the appointments to the FTC even occured yet? Do you think they have even moved into their office and started sharpening their pencils yet? And do you really think that the first thing on their agenda was to get this pesky Doubleclick case off the books? Tell me, when exactly was the last time that a politician kept his promises so promptly? When was the last time you knew a public servant to act so swiftly? At least try to make your conspiracy theory somewhat feasible.

Re:Does it strike anyone...

[Russ Steffen]

I'll bet that part of the deal is that they have to change their name to Dubyaclick.

Probe??

[tartanboy]

By probe, they do mean anal probe right? That is what the FTC does, isn't it? If not I wonder who the gentlemen who came to my door the other day were...

Blame the sites !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do the free software / Linux / geeky community go along with this ? What I mean is that despite all the banging on about privacy and rights on the web, how many sites do you know of in this community that carry adds from doubleclick ? Zillions !!!!!! Ok, they have to get their revenue from somewhere, but why do they have to sink so low as to allow doubleclick ads ? It's like the controversy surrounding Amazon and their one-click patents. Again, their are loads of sites that have links to amazon, embedded in (for example) Linux / free software book reviews, and at the same time they carry articles and letters about how Amazon is destroying the web !!!!! If the web sites are going to buy into this crap then it's going to carry on !!!! regards, spong (I can't be bothered to register)

Man the data they must have on Steve Jobs

[QuantumG]

is it just me or does everyone put "Steve Jobs" into "name" fields on online forms?

Re:Man the data they must have on Steve Jobs

[iso]

i always put the name "Jim Green" with the email address jim@aol.com. i'm not exactly sure why i started using that name, but it's been at least five years now.

i imagine Jim isn't terribly impressed with the amount of spam he's received over the past few years though. oh well, better him than me, and it serves him right for using AOL ;).

- j

Re:Man the data they must have on Steve Jobs

[dasmegabyte]

I am not a very nice person, and usually list my name as eat@poo.net, yourservice@isapackoflies.org or asdf@ghjkl.cz. I also try to mess up surveys whenever possible, by clicking buttons in a mathematical order and so forth. When I have to put my real name (for online shoppes and so forth) I always spell it differently, and keep a list of the misspellings so I can tell who sells my name where. For the occasional spammer I have to give a real address to (for confirmation or whatever), i use my dasmegabytespam@hotmail.com address. It's always filled with a few thousand pieces of unwanted mail, and it's nice to know it's all choking up some behemouth SQL server somewhere.

Why do I do this? Habit mostly. But it's nice to know there's always one alternative to having marketeers knowing everything about me: lie like a lazy dog.

On the internet I buy products based on reviews anyway.

Opt-out

[Wog]

Perhaps I'll send Doubleclick an opt-out letter of my own.

Then again, most companies don't pay attention to one little email... How about 500,000 of them? Nothing says, "I want out" more eloquently than a mail server at %99.8 load for two hours...

Dubya

[truthsearch]

The Dubya administration had better make privacy an issue. If they do what they're expected to do with corporations, we'll probably have our lives more controlled by corporations than ever before.

Not over yet

[Alien54]

Well, it is not over yet:

"There are still literally dozens of lawsuits from state attorneys generals and class-action litigants against DoubleClick," said Jason Catlett, president of privacy group Junkbusters.

"And they're not all going to give up just because the FTC closed their investigation."

The FTC's letter outlines steps that DoubleClick will take to update the next version of its privacy policy. The makeover will include information on the company's use of clear GIFs, or Web bugs; clarification on the opt-out cookie; and modifications to its Internet Address Finder Web site privacy policy that include more up-front guidelines on how data is sold.

I have no particular problem with demographics. but it is one of those things where "We must use for GOOD, not EVIL"

Who determines just what is good here? I swear, some marketers would not mind if we all tranced into being their trendy marketing slaves, or something, where you HAVE to purchase something as a matter of law?. Or Advertising becoming the next food group

"Make sure to get your daily dose of advertising today!" or "SPAM brand advertising is Better for YOU"

If we all become a slave of the marketeers (I Love Spam!), then everyone becomes a slave.

like the old song: "If you're happy and you know it, clink your chains...."

feh

Alta Vista ad on /.

[truthsearch]

Did anyone happen to notice that one of the ads on Slashdot, AltaVista Search Engive v3, is a link to ad.doubleclick.net?

Re:Alta Vista ad on /.

[interiot]

Yes, I've brought this up several times, each time I've been modded down.

Most people don't see it as a problem because... Slashdot has exclusive editorial control over its stories, and Andover has exclusive control over the advertisements. So no two-faced stuff going on really. Maybe hypocritical in that CmdrTaco is making money that comes from DC somewhere down the line, but it unrelated enough and it's such a small percentage of the ads that he probably manages to find a way to sleep at night.
--

Doubleclick Honest?

[Zaphod B]

Well, Doubleclick wouldn't lie about anything, now would they? Especially not to the government... aren't they bound by the Advertisers' Code of Ethics? We can trust them...

Doubleclick stats

[spudboy]

It turns out that the cookies Doubleclick issues are hex numbers in sequence, so if you get enough, you can tell how many are being issued and other fascinating statistical facts.

ddccss, the Distributed DoubleClick Cookie Snarfing System, now has more than 15 million DoubleClick cookies in its archive.

Also, there's a Fucking Retards Guide to Blocking doubleclick.net.

well

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an ironic hoot, now isn't it? I mean slashdot has got to be the worst site on the net for gathering and selling user info - perfect target audience for andover and va to sell to hardware, software, techie related companies that can mass mail and spam all the fucking techno weenies in slashdot's huge user database! What a scam.

No wonder that Malda boy is rich and famous - he'll stop at nothing to rake in the old green, eh? Even looking like a hypocrite doesn't stop that money-grubbing bill gates wannabe! Ha, he really has you linux commie hippie freaks strung along!

"Spelling is for poor people."Rob Malda

Double Click Double Schmick

[zentec]

It used to be that regularily killing off cookies diluted doubleclick's ability to target ads. But I've noticed on my DSL connection that they are probably using my IP address too. I've entered all of Doubleclick's suspected IP's into the firewall.

Rants and rambles about doubleclick

[griffinn]

Doubleclick, the source of evil.

They're the reason I turn off cookies on my browser.

They're the reason I'm forced to use Internet Exploder, because Nutscrap sucks when it comes to selective cookie acceptance.

They're the reason I have to rewrite many a script when I discover MY site doesn't work without cookies, after I've turned cookies off on my browser.

Doubleclick gives cookies and sessions and URLs and the ad industry a bad name.

Here's how to get a privacy law passed

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want Congress to get off their collective asses and pass meaningful privacy legislation, some enterprising soul needs to purchase the credit reports, social security number, marketing habits, etc. of every U.S. senator and post it online. As long as you obtain the information legally, you can do pretty much what you want with it. Send a tarball of the info to every news organization you can think of (both domestic and international). That will make them sit up and take notice!

On second thought, put the information up for sale on EBay to the highest bidder. That's the American way!

Doubleclick and advertising

[LafinJack]

I'm getting tired of all these 'privacy advocates' spouting off every time some net ad agency tries to get some basic info about their targets (in DoubleClick's case, not so basic info). But if we want internet sites to be free, those sites 99% of the time need advertising. If the advertisers don't know who they're advertising to, they make no money, and thus give no money to the site. TV advertisers have MUCH more info than you would think about you. Age demographics, gender, etc.

What I'm saying is that you should lay off a bit, because you can't have it both ways: free with ads, or a subscription service with no/less ads. Just because they have information about you doesn't mean theyre going to do anything with it other than targeted ads!

/incoherent_rant :)

Lowtax from Something Awful has a great article about this that he posted a week or so ago, which is here.

Lighten up a bit people! Jeez!

Good!

[Morphy3]

Let me ask all of you guys this... do you reeeeeeally want the Federal Government to regulate privacy? Start a War On Ads? When has the government ever intervened and helped anybody in recent history?

Rather than give some unknowledgable bureaucrat the authority to say who can and cant use what ad system and when, why don't you organize a boycot of websites that use doubleclick. The liberal media would love to cover it. You will either see a competitor to doubleclick with a privacy agreement rise up, or websites will yank 3rd party ads off of their website. Most webmasters would prefer to see them go anyway.

Just because something is 'bad' (drugs, medical bills, salary, investments), it is not going to get better with government regulation. The internet is where it is because the government stayed away from it for quote some time. Good!

And remember... faceless corporations are an easy target for FUD because they seem inhuman or uncaring. But behind that faceless corporation are thousands of employees and investors... people with families, people who hire others, VC firms that feed other businesses, a replenishing fountain for the economy. In this case, our 'faceless' corporation supports hundreds of thousands of websites, which in turn are our new foundation of free speech and communication.

Don't create a 'golem' by unleashing an Imperial Federal Government with the power to control what DBA's can or can't store. You will never get the monster to go back to where it came. Vote Libertarian.

Poison the datastream...

[superdoo]

Is it possible to build/run bots that hit random websites or spew junk data that these spyware agents would take back to poison their central database? Is this a valid form of retaliation to privacy invasion? Is it possible to hide the signal of our movements in a wall of noise? I know nothing about such things, these are just a few random thoughts...

I'd...

[enrico_suave]

I'd hate to be the custodial engineer at FTC and have to clean up after that.

E.
www.randomdrivel.com -- All that is NOT fit to link to

Using konqueror

[Asic Eng]

Konqueror has a really nice cookie management.
Just set up "Reject all cookies from this domain"
for doubleclick, and you're set. I guess that
should mostly stop them from collecting your data.

I'm a bit weary of blocking their ads altogether,
though (like with editing the hosts file). At
least for some of the web sites I visit I want to
make sure, that the site gets their advertising income.

How much do they pay you???

[www.sorehands.com]

You are missing a few things here!

They are not paying me for storing their cookies! They have not asked me for my permission top collect information about me.

On your site, do you have a user approve their computer be used for storage before the storage of the cookie is done?

Store Cards

[IdeaMan]

Ok, so stores charge you higher prices prices for you keeping your data private. There is a simple way around this:

Swap cards with your neighbor/next guy in line at the checkout counter.