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DoubleClick Settles Privacy Investigation
guttentag writes "DoubleClick ended the 30-month probe into its business practices with an agreement to pay $450,000 for the investigative costs of the states and 'consumer education.' It also agreed to allow a third-party to audit it for compliance with its privacy policy for four years and give individuals access to their profiles. However, it will continue to use to track users with cookies. The Washington Post also has an article, but it is conspicuously missing the standard disclosure statement that informs readers of The Post's business relationship with DoubleClick." Well, let me be sure to point out then that Slashdot also serves Doubleclick ads. If you recall, this all started when Doubleclick merged with a database company and announced plans to merge its online and offline databases.
Doubleclick will sell to anyone, and I can't believe that some people buy into it. For example, I have an account with Bank Of America, and one day while I was checking my account balances I noticed that mozilla was loading something from doubleclick. I looked at the page and there were no ads to be seen. I checked out the HTML source and sure enough they were loading a 1x1 transparent gif from doubleclick. Now, could someone please explain to me why Bank of America would be interested in doing that? The only possible reason they could be doing this is:
1) Doubleclick is paying them an assload of money to do it.
2) BOA is receiving browsing profiles for their banking customers.
Those are the only possible benefits I can see from this whole thing. Any comments?
Slashdot also serves Doubleclick ads
Yeah, I know. I find it really amusing when the topic is the typical MS bashing post and there is a huge ad for Visual Studio.net
Live web cams
Would it be possible to write a program that feeds disinformation to doubleclick? If 5000 people would download it (I might) and run it on theire xDSL modem... How fast would theire database be turning bad? And if their statistics are wrong, their business is gone.
How does one wirte such a jammer-program?
-- (:> jms cs.vu.nl (_) --"---
Two or three years ago, all the newspaper computer columns were full of "don't worry, be happy" explanations of why cookies cannot be used to identify individuals. They stated authoritatively that there was NO POSSIBLE WAY cookies could be used in this fashion and "explained" the "technical reasons" behind it.
For example, Infoworld columnist Fred Langa says here that "To me, cookies seem pretty harmless. Despite commonly-voiced concerns among the anti-cookie faction, cookies (or the JavaScripts that create them) won't let website owners surreptitiously figure out who you are, for example... My advice: leave cookies turned on; the real benefits far outweigh the very small risks."
Indeed, a Google search on "cookies cannot be used to identify individuals" turns up 21000 hits--mostly in Web site's privacy statements.
DoubleClick's motto: when it comes to invading privacy, we do the "impossible" every day.
I think Slashdot should rethink its connection with DoubleClick.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Perhaps all the Cookie Paranoia could be put to rest if there were a mandatory extension to the existing Cookie Protocol which indicated the 'type' or 'use' of a particular cookie, examples could include:
** Session Tracking
** Shopping (Carts etc.)
** Advertisers and Profilers (such as Doubleclick)
And possibly a variety of others.
Once such a system was in place, a user should be able to select whether to Accept, Reject or be Prompted for cookies of each type.
The only problem would be getting the adertisers to use their 'designated' cookie type...
Disclaimer: I meant what I thought, not what I wrote! What? You can't read my Mind? Oh dear!