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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.
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...
Developers: We can use your help.
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.
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.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
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.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
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.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
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-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
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.
Just my US$2e-02.
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
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...
is it just me or does everyone put "Steve Jobs" into "name" fields on online forms?
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
Developers: We can use your help.
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
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Did anyone happen to notice that one of the ads on Slashdot, AltaVista Search Engive v3, is a link to ad.doubleclick.net?
Developers: We can use your help.
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.
-- Real free software sites don't use GIFs.
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.
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I have not yet begun to procrastinate!
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?
Fight Spammers!