FTC To Examine Targeted Advertising

narramissic writes "Following a series of complaints by privacy groups, the FTC has announced plans to host a two-day forum on targeted advertising at the beginning of November in Washington, DC. It's the first time since 2000 that the agency has looked at industry practices in this area. They hope to learn how Web advertising firms protect the personal data they collect, how they notify consumers about that data, and whether the data is sold to or used by other firms." The FTC page for the event ia here. Sign up by September 14 if you want to be a panelist or to recommend topics for discussion.

Comments

Editors!

[computerman413]

The FTC page for the event ia here. Perhaps the editors need to use the preview button. Or should I say Perhapa the editora need to uae the preview button.

I'll make the FTC's job easy.

[sconeu]

They hope to learn how Web advertising firms protect the personal data they collect,

They don't.

how they notify consumers about that data,

They don't.

and whether the data is sold to or used by other firms.

Yes.

There. Study done.

Re:I'll make the FTC's job easy.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

You, are a liar.

Re:Hosts file - don't surf without it

[The Hobo]

Adblock Plus + an auto-updating filter = I don't know how I used the web without it

http://adblockplus.org/en/

Yes, whenever we have a privacy concern

[iminplaya]

We can always depend on the government to help out.

Re:Hosts file - don't surf without it

[null.account]

To the parent and GP:

I too use hosts file blocking, but I took a weekend (I'm not a code god) and augmented it's usefulness by developing a browser plug-in that infers whether a given image is a (putative) ad. It acquires DOM info about a particular image (size, dimensions, position in the client area) and examines the originating URL.

So far, I've gotten about 70% "true positive" results on images/frames that aren't straight-out blocked by my hosts file (~8900 entries and growing). I'm working on ways to improve that statistic in my spare time.

Also, part of the goal of this little hobby of mine is to pre-filter the html/JS source for a given document for the undesireable non-graphic-ad content (a la tracking gifs, etc.) while preserving the important stuff (like legitimate links). It's interesting work, and I really believe I'm doing something worthwhile.

Given the ad-blocking features within popular browsers parent mentioned, I know it's "NIH" to do it myself, but for me it's as much an avocation as it is my own personal ad blocker, and if I can do something in my spare time that works at least that well then there are surely folks out there who have damned-near perfect tools for this goal in their own spare time, home-grown or not.

I'd be interested to hear anyone's ideas about this kind of "personal" project.

Targeted advertising is still rare?

[hcdejong]

I rarely come across an ad that looks 'targeted' to me. Amazon does it, but that's based on data they gather on their own site (books I've previously bought), not data they purchased. Otherwise, website ads are IP-based (the Slashdot page I'm looking at now shows an ad specific to my country), or use the search terms I just entered (Google).
Ads I get via e-mail are invariably spam, which is as untargeted as it gets. Snail mail isn't targeted either.

So where's all this 'targeted advertising' going on? Companies must be sitting on loads of data that never gets used, if I'm any indication.