Nationwide Class Action Filed Against DoubleClick

Stanley Ference writes "A nationwide class action lawsuit has been commenced in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, against DoubleClick Inc. DoubleClick is a leading provider of products and services used by direct marketers, web publishers and advertisers to plan, execute and analyze marketing programs. In 2002, Doubleclick served more than 630 billion ads on the Internet for thousands of customers." If you've ever been tricked by one of those ads telling you that your "connection is not optimized" or that you have "1 new message waiting," you could be part of the class. Read on for details.

Stanley Ference continues: "The class action complaint alleges that DoubleClick deceptively and fraudulently commandeered millions of Internet users to the commercial websites of DoubleClick's customers through dissemination of tens-of-millions of fraudulent Internet advertising banners that impersonated computer system messages. The Complaint states that through use of such Fake User Interface ("FUI") dialogs that fraudulently represented themselves as computer system error messages, DoubleClick tricked millions of Internet users into interrupting the work they were performing to respond to the fraudulent system message, only to unexpectedly find both computer and computer user thus hijacked to commercial websites of DoubleClick's customers.

Additional information about this lawsuit, including an illustration of the advertising banners that are the subject of this lawsuit, may be found at ferencelaw.com/doubleclick."

Here's a link to the press release (PDF) announcing the filing of this lawsuit.

Comments

True Story

[eskimoboy]

My mother was sitting there clicking one of those ads for about 15 minutes and closing out the new window every time it opened. The reason? It said "Click OK to close this window." I was commandeered into showing her that you have to click the little X button to close out the window. Maybe I'm biased, but I'm glad they're finally getting sued for taking advantage of the people that are, shall we say, less-than-knowledgeable internet users.

Not a problem

[daveo0331]

From the law firm's website:

WHO IS A MEMBER OF THE PROPOSED CLASS?

The class action Complaint was brought on behalf of all persons residing in the United States who have, while operating a computer, encountered an advertising banner like the one illustrated on this website.

If you saw the ads, you're a member of the class. You don't have to have clicked on any of them.

They deserve it!

[KC7GR]

DoubleClick's entire business model is based on gross invasion of what little privacy we have left, intensive data mining, consumer profiling, spamming, etc., ad nauseum. Far as I'm concerned, they deserve this!

Some examples: In 1998, the spammed Princeton U, trolling for job candidates. In June of 2003, DoubleClick announced their own so-called anti-spam initiatives that, according to the article, will "focus on finding out how consumers identify spam, to give marketers a better idea of how they can avoid being unfairly singled out as spammers." (For the record, spam is any E-mail received that tries to sell you something or, in the case of political spam, get your vote, and that you did not ask for).

Want more? No problem. In 2001, DoubleClick two unnamed E-mail marketing companies to, according to a quote in the article from CBS's Market Watch, "increase its junk e-mail capabilities."

Still not convinced? How about this thread over at the Firewall-Wizards site from 1999?

In summary, it looks like DoubleClick has long attempted to redefine spam as "That Which We Do Not Do." It also appears that their ethics are questionable at best, especially in light of those FUI banners on web pages.

DoubleClick, if you're reading this... You brought it on yourselves, and you have nothing but your own shady practices to blame. May you go down in a nice, pretty set of multicolored flames, and may the ashes be used as space filler for the next five Great Deconstructed Architectural Makeovers in FunFun Town. Nick Danger could probably use a new office...

Re:Query...

[djeaux]

Nuala O'Connor, DoubleClick's vice president for data protection and chief privacy officer, began Aug. 13, 2001, as the Commerce Department's deputy director of the Office of Policy and Strategic Planning & in 2002, became Chief Counsel for Technology. I don't think Ashcroft heads the Commerce Department, but you're almost "close enough for government work":

• Doubleclick exec takes a top post at Commerce Department
• The original article from "Wired" is here. The O'Connor part of the story starts about halfway down.
• Here's another article from "Wired", about a week after O'Connor started.
• Last year, O'Connor became Chief Counsel for Technology for the Department's Technology Administration