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Google Using DoubleClick Tracking Cookies
dstates sends news coming out of the letters the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent to a number of broadband and Internet companies about their policies and practices on user tracking. The committee has now made public 25 responses to its queries, and many companies, including Google, acknowledge using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers. The Committee is considering legislation to require explicitly informing the consumer of the type of information being gathered and any intent to use it for a different purpose, and a right to say "no" to the collection or use. The submitter notes that, while Google denies using deep packet inspection, if the traffic is a Google search or email to or from a Gmail account, Google does not need DPI to see the contents of the message. "The revelations came in response to a bipartisan inquiry of how more Internet companies have gathered data on customers. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said 'Increasingly, there are no limits technologically as to what a company can do in terms of collecting information... and then selling it as a commodity to other providers.' Some companies like NebuAd have tested deep-packet inspection with some broadband providers Knology and Cable One. Google said that it had begun to use the DoubleClick ad-serving cookie that allow the tracking of Web surfing across different sites but said it was not using deep packet inspection. Google promotes the fact that its merger with DoubleClick provides advertisers 'insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign,' as well as 'how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad.' Microsoft and Yahoo acknowledge the use of behavioral targeting. Yahoo says it allows users to turn off targeted advertising on its Web sites; Microsoft has not yet responded to the committee."
Ahem. STOP SPENDING MY TAX DOLLARS ON THIS CRAP.
Anyone using a computer who doesn't understand why they shouldn't accept all cookies and scripts and click on everything shiny deserves (yes, really!) to have their actions remotely monitored and the resulting data sold to the highest bidder.
I don't want to drown in regulation just because some idiots can't be bothered to pull their collective head out before they use their systems.
cogito ergo dubito
I used to always block doubleclick cookies. I'd hate to lose all my stored google cookies, so which ones do I need to block?
CS Lite
This will let you block all those types of cookies, and as well give you MUCH better cookie management in Firefox. It lets you just deny cookies globally and just enable them for sites you want, without being a total pain in the ass
Combine that with Adblock Plus, with the tracking filters, and you can get past all this tracking stuff without having to use no-script, which considering how javascript heavy most sites are today, is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer
After they sort this cookie stuff out, I hope they hold a House Commity on forcing DoubleClick (google) to make an ad-server that doesnt crash every 5 minutes (or at least one that you can log-into with firefox). -Disgruntled Ad Trafficker
Well, I wasn't implying that one should switch browsers per se. You're right about the other browsers, except that turning off third party cookies doesn't work the same for IE or Firefox as it does for Opera.
But Opera does give you a finer degree of control. You can actually either set 'Accept cookies only for the site I visit' or you can set 'Accept cookies' for the individual site. From the operawiki.info site cookies entry:
If you set the site preference to "Accept cookies", while visiting this domain, in addition to the cookies allowed by the "Accept cookies only from the site I visit" rule, content coming from a remote domain can set cookies for its corresponding domain and subdomains IF AND ONLY IF the remote domain also has a site preference that allows cookies for itself. This means that if you want to allow remote domains while visiting this domain, you need to manually add a site preference for each remote domain and set it to "Accept cookies only for the site I visit" or "Accept cookies".
"Accept cookies" for a site preference DOES NOT cause Opera to behave as if the global is set to "Accept cookies" when visiting the domain. This way you're not automatically getting opted in to remote domains. You have control over what remote domains you want to allow.
This is different then setting unchecking 'Accept third-party cookies'.
My blog
The problem is, a disturbingly small amount of information is needed to distinguish you from everyone else, creating a virtual "national ID" without you even being aware of it.
Let's do some math.
With 300 million people in the US, as few as 28 bits suffice to uniquely identify you (this assumes that the bits are independent in both source and distribution; in practice some redundancy will be required to make up for the fact that neither is strictly true). Now let's look at how many bits are contained in commonly tracked or easily trackable items:
It doesn't take too many of these to add up to the 30 or so needed to uniquely identify you, "national ID" or not.
--MarkusQ
I noticed that the download of slashdot webpages would be delayed by some strange link to
http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js
http://www.ad.doubleclick.net/adj/ostg.slashdot/yro_p1_leader;logged_in=1;dcopt=....
You can check this by clicking on Adblock in Firefox.
I do wonder if this allows doubleclick.net to see past "anonymous coward" postings.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
There's CustomizeGoogle, a Greasemonkey script which will, among other things, randomize the replies to Google's cookies. Unfortunately, it's rather slow, and may result in Javascript "script running too long" errors. Right idea, though.
I use: