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Privacy Groups Want Feds To Investigate Targeted Ads
ciscoguy01 tips news that three privacy groups are asking the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether ad networks are "unfairly tracking Americans and profiting from their data." According to Wired,
"Companies named in the complaint (PDF) include Google, Yahoo, PubMatic, TARGUSinfo, MediaMath, eXelate, Rubicon Project, AppNexus, and Rocket Fuel. At issue is a growing market of targeted, real-time ads, where advertisers can choose to show ads to people based on their age, gender, income and location — as well as their recent online behavior — often on unrelated sites that let third parties track users.... Third-party cookie tracking isn't new, but as the complaint points out, marketers are increasingly trying to augment that data with other data sets, such as the social network data that Rapleaf harvests and resells.... Tying ad cookies to personally identifiable data would let marketers successfully combine online and offline data on website visitors to build a complete digital dossier on a user."
The government will allow the private sector to do what it is politically unable to do itself. Once enough data is collected, the state can access it under National Security Letters when it needs to. All this without the political and legal consequences of the state operating the system itself.
... but is this part of the price we pay for free websites?
AFA harvesting data from social networking sites, well, if you're willing to post every detail of your life you can't be surprised if someone, or some company, is willing to suck up that data. It doesn't make it right, but I find it hard to feel sorry for people who want their lives to be a "web based reality show" for their friends but don't want anyone to actually use that information (either for marketing or for passing judgement on their character when it comes to employment, etc).
As for whether the FTC will investigate, it’s hard to say — but it’s not too likely. The complaint doesn’t seem to allege any clear-cut violations of law
It is Sunday. Go mow the lawn and enjoy a beer afterwards, or write some code. The world will survive this for now.
Two weeks ago it was Theora, last week was Flash, this week it's cookies?
Man, it's hard to keep up with teh evils of teh intarwebs!
Just introduce the rule that any customer contacted by a company may force them to provide a complete record (sent in paper, with a personal valid signature of the person in charge) on his personal data and how they got it, and the right to demand deletion of his record and the restriction a not use the same way again. Wrong statements should be punished by hefty fines and prison for the person signing it.
if 5% of the people do it this would clog up the system pretty much.
If this were a court rather than the FTC, it's be a textbook case of "dismissed based on failure to state a claim". May as well sue Ford for "profiting from selling ground transportation".
To summarize: the Internet is not, and should not be, a perfectly safe zone with rubber bumpers on all the sharp corners. We cannot expect the government to protect us from every possible implication of our own actions. People can limit third party interactions on the Internet each according to their ability, technical or financial or otherwise. Grow up people!
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
Never trust anyone who thinks that "life is unfair" is right and proper.
I only have to say that privacy can also be used against the wicked as well as by them (Do I really need to cite examples here?). Humans do have a 'need' (or I suppose such an intense want for that it's turned into a need) for privacy. It's why we have bathroom doors. They serve no practical purpose except to give us some privacy when we are expelling waste. No matter how recent an invention, privacy is an important one to a great many people. If you feel differently, that's cool, we all have different levels of what could be considered private information.
I got nuthin
The problem isn't that privacy is a recent invention, it's that technology has made it much harder to come by. Back in the day privacy was automatic, as there was no other way it could be. This was due primarily to geographical considerations and the effort required to get information from one location to another. Once there, the "processing" of said information was another matter entirely. This wall no longer exists - acquiring information - in terms of both its scope and detail - is relatively effortless. Further, it can be disseminated almost instantaneously - to just about anywhere.
Nobody wants to stop you from getting target ads, if you explicitly prefer them.
First, there are no "fundamental rights". Every right is as valid as any other. Unless you can tell me how are we supposed to distinguish between those rights without asking for your opinion.
Second, privacy is not a recent invention. The invasion of privacy is a recent invention, before that the lack of privacy wasn't an issue, because it didn't exist.
Third, it's funny how we as individuals don't have the right to keep our data private, yet no one claims that companies' secrets should be public domain. Only profit counts, right?
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