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FTC Wants Browsers To Block Online Tracking
storagedude writes "The FTC wants a do-not-track mechanism that would allow Web users to opt out of online behavioral tracking, similar to the national do-not-call registry. The agency's preferred method for accomplishing this would be a browser-based tool that would give users the option of blocking data collection across the Web. The only problem is that the agency may not have the authority to require this, thanks to concerted lobbying efforts by the advertising industry. The first step may just be voluntary measures, to be released this fall."
why not Opt-in and disabled by default and any website owner that tries to track without explicit consent (ie. an opt-in) gets done for hacking...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I thought this was called disable cookies, and delete all browsing data upon exit? This isn't even an issue. Do that, and they can track you about as well as what phone prompts you chose when you call support.
There's already an opt-out option:
https://www.torproject.org/
Visit https://bridges.torproject.org/ to grab some bridge IPs and
add this to your torrc file:
UseBridges 1
paste the bridges you obtained from the url above here starting
with the word bridge and following with the IP, one on each line,
like so:
Bridge 1.2.3.4
Bridge 5.6.7.8
Need help with Tor? Speak to the developers (and users) directly:
irc.oftc.net #tor
Or join the Tor mailing list: click the first url above, click
Docs at the top of the page, scroll down for the mailing list
information.
If this is true:
"The FTC wants a do-not-track mechanism that would allow Web users to
opt out of online behavioral tracking, similar to the national do-not-call
registry." they could encourage the use of Tor on their website, possibly
running some tor nodes themselves to aid the Tor network.
It'd be nice to have incognito mode as default.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
There must be a FF extension that can do just that by now. I can't imagine that there are no paranoid nerds that haven't thought of this.
And if there is no FF extension then the required functionality is probably impossible to do browser-side.
Actually I am wondering how they track behaviour, and what a browser can do to prevent it. I can think of a few bits:
- Cookies. The obvious one. Third-party cookies especially. Can be blocked in FF and other browsers for more than a decade already.
- Referrer tags in URLs. Sometimes useful - especially for sites to see where visitors originate - but also for the end user. E.g. after a Google search you go to some web page that then highlights your search terms. Seems trivial to block in your browser as your browser puts the referrer tag in the http request.
- IP address. Naturally public information. Can not be blocked, ever. Merely obfuscated by using tor or so.
- Browser ID. Can easily be faked. But is usually constant for a user, allowing them to be traced anyway using this and the IP address. Also between cooperating web sites. And of course third-party ad providers who in turn can follow IP addresses over their customer's web sites. Those third parties can be (partly) blocked by e.g. AdBlock Plus, only partly as the visited web site can still give your info (IP address, page visited) to the ad company, even when the actual ads are blocked.
That's all that I can think of at the moment, there may be more ways to follow a user. But I don't see much that can be done on the browser-side to stop more tracking.
Why are our elected officials spending any time on this? Is there *any* evidence that the data collected has ever been misused in any way? The online advertising industry is based on selectively targetting users with advertisements, and so far I see no compelling reasons for the government to interfere. Before the government starts regulating an industry, shouldn't there be evidence that the industry is in fact in need of regulating? Disclaimer: I work in an advertising company developing the conversion rate models
By checking whether people are in the do not track registry, we can do behavioral tracking of those who don't want to be tracked!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
And how to you identify theses?
We run just a few sites and they are allow users to change how info is displayed and then track the user and make sure those changes are available across all sites. Would we qualify even if all of that is for internal and a few external users?
For do not call that was easy, you make a commercial cold call you qualify, if this was that easy then someone would of already addeded it or a plug in would be available.
For the rest, there's Adblock and NoScript.
Here's how this will go...
1. Online behavioural tracking and 3rd party cookies outlawed
2. Adverts shown to us are now even less relevant / interesting than they were before.
3. We all click on far fewer adverts as a result.
4. Websites make far less money from their advertising
5. Vast majority of free websites go bankrupt or become subscription only so we stop using them.
6. The concept of the 'free' (as in beer) Internet is lost in history.
It's a LOSE - LOSE situation. When will people realise that well targetted and appropriate adverts are good for everyone?
and assorted free market fundamentalists:
you need government regulations. you want to pay taxes for the legions of government bureaucrats toiling away somewhere interfering with business
because without such regulation business will trample your rights
you heard me correctly: the government protects your rights and corporations trample them. i'm sorry of this idea contrasts with certain brands of low brain wattage propaganda about the government trampling your rights: if the paranoid schizophrenic fantasies of certain right wing zealots ever come to fruition, those abuses will not happen at the hands of washington dc, they will happen at the hands of large corporate entities
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
similar to the Do-Not-Call registry
— which means that you need to identify exactly who you are so that the web site knows not to track you. Most trackers currently do not know who you are, just that you have visited some set of web sites. <irony>That will, of course, not be abused by anyone.</irony>
So their suggested cure is worse than the current disease.
Having a database of users is also heavily bureauocratic & sooner of later that list will get stolen.
A much simpler mechanism is to have a new HTTP header, eg Tracking with values of yes or no. True anonymity, not hard for the browser vendors to implement, light weight.
OK: it will be ignored, but so could the Do-Not-Call registry. Enforcement was always going to be the issue, does the FTC realise that the first letter of www stands for World, ie it has no legal right to control all of it ?
To me the concept of a Do-Not-Call registry is very different than what this would be aimed at and should not be thought of in the same manner.
Advertisers wanting to advertise or track consumer behaviour is not a bad activity that should be banned.
The problem that occurred with phone advertising is that it is extremely intrusive. There is a Do-Not-Call list because people don't want their phone ringing all day long and trying to get to the phone, or interrupting calls, only to find it's an advertiser.
Consumer tracking through cookies is not intrusive in the same sense at all (if you want to argue it is invading personal information, that is a different discussion). It is a completely passive activity that is not disrupting people.
So I don't think it should be put in the same bucket as a Do-Not-Call list.
Ghostery blocks all that tracking crap...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/
Waiting for the other shoe to...
i have every right to say what happens on my machine
additionally, i have every right to insist you change your behavior, such as with logs, if suitable logical reason can be found that my rights could potentially be abused by your practices
in other words, there are principles that govern society, and no one is above those principles. and claims to be exempt from those principles, for reasons of trade and commerce, is the road to hell
understand that, or be the enemy of freedom
individual liberty is not trumped by corporate interest, despite all the paid legal whores and assorted apologists to the contrary
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There are ads on the internet? Seriously, when did this happen?
The best targeted ads are useless if no one sees them. Firefox could include Adblock Plus functionality by default (with easylist enabled) and we'd have an instant restructuring of the entire online advertisement model. Sites that would throw up a pay-wall aren't worth my time anyway, good riddance to bad rubbish.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Is to have the FTC and FCC start gaining real statutory powers to mandate product design. It's one thing like with the FCC to have a program that requires that wireless devices follow certain guidelines to keep from interfering with one another or emergency responders, but this? No way. This sort of mandate would only be the beginning of the federal government telling software developers how to do their job in ways that are dubiously related to the common good.
however, the vast amount of users are not technically astute, and laws must be passed and enforced to protect them. it is not beholden upon the computer user to have a computer science degree to use a browser, nor should it be, all elitist snarky slashdot comments to the contrary
do you have to be an auto mechanic before you drive on the road?
do you have to be a lawyer before you sit in a jury box?
do you have to be a architect before you own a home?
no?
then it is obvious that your appeal to technical competency before someone gets behind a computer browser is an elitist position, not to mention an impossible position
it is beholden upon SOCIETY to pass and enforce laws to protect the weak and the innocent, not punish them for being weak and innocent and then tell them after the fact they should have known. this is a vision of a brutal and injust society that you operate from
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
separate form their constituents interests?
because of infection of the government by corporate money
read the first sentence:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
We. The. People.
to the extent that the interests of the corporations are more important to the politicians than the interests of we the people, is the extent to which that government MUST BE CLEANED UP, not destroyed
your position is this: you see a sick person in front of you (the government). your solution is to condemn the sick person, rather than treat him for the disease
"At least a "greedy" corporation is putting people to work"
additionally, you completely absolve the disease of any wrongdoing for the fact that the patient is sick
it just blows my fucking mind, its fucking incredible: that some people should see the corporate infection of our government and conclude the only solution is to destroy the government!
the only thing standing between us and the infection that is the real source of the abuse of our rights is the government. it needs to be CLEANED UP, not DESTROYED, or then all of the abuses you see GET WORSE. that really is the truth. wake the fuck up
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
>I think you're going to see probably in the next Congress a
>fair amount of interest in moving legislation forward to have
>more prescriptive rules."
Leave it to the US government to think it can regulate the global internet.
If they accomplish this, I have some cats I'd like herded across town.
Don't make the website angry. You wouldn't like the website when it's angry!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
the government protects your rights and corporations trample them
The interesting thing about this blanket conclusion is that it doesn't account for reality. What reality? The reality that only government holds the special right to employ coercion against you, while the rest of us (including corporations) do not. In fact, that is exactly what defines government: the ability to use coercion as their means. Anyone else who does so is, by definition, a criminal.
With that said, it's painfully obvious that government isn't just more likely to oppress human rights, past, present, and future -- it's the entire business model of government. Everything government does is founded precisely on that special ability to coerce. Every single thing government does is backed by a threat of physical force. How on earth could any entity be more dangerous to human rights than government?
To sum up, a corporation that attacks your rights has committed a crime. A government that does so has not. Corporate abuse of individual freedoms is a problem, no doubt. But ironically, it is government that determines whether a corporation has committed a crime.
I realize you're just dying to take a cheap shot at your arch enemy, the freedom-minded indivudual, but I do suggest you work on your aim, because the only thing you shot in this case was your own foot.
...to require this."
I sure as hell hope not. All we need is a Federal agency regulating browser design.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The necessary technological change is about as likely. Given the prevalence of "web bugs", the one-pixel transparent images used to track web use by downloading images from a third party web server, and the third party management of cookies used to share data, and all the other technologies, there's no "browser setting" that will fix it all. Even insisting that all web content come from the same hostname when viewing a page breaks down when that server can simply proxy the requests for content to a third party and pass along the connecting IP or session information in the format of the proxied request.
Changing the browsers might help, but the less reputable websites will certainly ignore the rules and use the remaining technologies.
Such as requiring a standard form (similar to food labels) that clearly shows the privacy policy that organizations have. The way things stand you need a law degree and 2-3 days to understand the policies that people put on their web sites regarding privacy -- if they have any or make it available.
Perhaps they could require companies to publish what data they collect and/or who they share it with. Privacy is a hot button issue with me, I don't have any credit cards nor do I participate in store affinity programs. Put I realize I am the exception, and most people think I am crazy to care. I think it is unlikely that Congress with give any more power to government agencies to gather information on the net (in fact, quite the opposite probably. Don't YOU want to know what type of shampoo the terrorist buy? [where's the sarc symbol?]) That is, until there is an issue that affects them. If you recall, they mandated that video stores protect the privacy of rentals when the stuff they were renting got leaked to the press. If there were a big data breech at Netflix or Victoria's Secret (or Michael Salems TV Boutique) they might get onto protecting the privacy of regular people.
do you have to be an auto mechanic? no, but you do have to take a drivers test to show you are proficient enough to drive a 2 ton chunk of metal around safely.
do you have to be a lawyer? no, but you have to at least be responsible enough to show up & follow instructions.
do you have to be a architect? no, but you do have to be responsible to perform maintenance & upkeep your house.
and to top it off... the vast number of people don't care about being tracked. if they did, facebook would be a complete failure after news of private info being let loose.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
then there is a power vacuum
that power vacuum will be filled by corporations, who will employ blackwater private security forces against individual liberty
am i talking science fiction?
no, i'm talking HISTORICAL AMERICAN FACT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency
why is it that so many free market fundamentalists forget about the banking panics in the 1800s (no regulations=bubbles and pops... hello 2008)? why do so many libertarians ignore the abuses of individual liberties by corporations in the gilded age (corporations, not governments, remove your liberties)? why do so many right wing small government zealots completely ignore the hard fought and hard won protections for workers in the 1800s? (40 hour work week, minimum wage, etc... you think these ideas were not developed in an atmosphere of constant abuse of the individual by corporations?)
fact, solid motherfucking fact: corporations will abuse your individual liberties as much as they can in the pursuit of the buck. they ARE NOT BEHOLDEN TO YOU. you NEED the government as your protector with all those regulations and enforcement, or YOU WILL BE ABUSED. to the extent that the government has been coopted by corporate interests and infected from the inside is the extent YOU NEED TO CLEAN UP YOUR GOVERNMENT OF CORPORATE INFECTION...not destroy the only entity which keeps the REAL abusers from defiling your rights!
corporations are the single greatest abusers of individual liberties. government is your only source of protection from those abuses. you NEED a strong central government, or every abuse you detest will be visited upon you MORE
so stop working to DESTROY government, start working to CLEAN UP government
if you argue for smaller government, in the name of individual liberties, the real world effect of your efforts is increased abuses of individual liberties, because you do not understand who the real abusers are
if the patient is sick, don't kill the patient and let the disease spread, treat the patient of the disease and stop the spread of the disease. fight the disease, not the patient. the patient is YOUR government, the disease is corporate dollars
read the first fucking sentence:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
WE. THE. PEOPLE. to the extent that the government is not we the people is the extent to which it has been corrupted by corporate dollars. so get rid of the corporate dollars, not the government!
reclaim YOUR government from corporate infection and make it a more effective tool in protecting your rights and freedoms from the real abusers: corporations who would destroy your rights and freedoms, and have done so in the past, and will happily do so again in the pursuit of more profit, if there is only a weak ineffective government between them and more profit
CLEAN UP GOVERNMENT. DON'T DESTROY THE ONLY THING THAT PROTECTS YOU FROM THE REAL ABUSERS OF YOUR RIGHTS
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How would the web know who you are? To implement this would there be some grand unified sign on to get on the web? The government would never abuse that. Yeah no I'll pass.
Why hasn't mozilla given us this already. Instead now they won't even let us control cookies.
Can we have your liver?
I am officially gone from
You have one for car design. One for plug design. One for food preparation.
There used to be a "Doubleclick" opt-out cookie that they honored. I wonder if it still works since the Google takeover?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
The summary is misleading, it says, " The only problem is that the agency may not have the authority to require this, thanks to concerted lobbying efforts by the advertising industry." The structure of this sentence implies that the FTC would naturally have this authority but "concerted lobbying efforts" got Congress to pass a law removing that authority. In fact, what happened was that someone tried to put this into a bill that it didn't belong in (the "financial reform" bill) and lobbyists managed to get it removed. If it is a good idea for the FTC to have this authority (and it may be, that is a different discussion than what this post is about), than it should be a bill on its own (or with other closely related items). There are several reasons for this, the most important being that it would allow voters to know who was for this particular provision and who was against it. Furthermore following the link to the article about the provision (written by what appears to be someone who favors the provision) looks like it would have delegated to the FTC what is very close to law making authority (which correctly belongs in Congress).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
One solution I've used for ages is Privoxy. You have a local (if you like) proxy which filters out a ton of this crap, regardless of which browser or plugins you use. There is simple integration with any specific rules you would like to add. More interesting is how much of the tracking crap is out there. Just turn on some basic logging, and see all the cruft that is not getting requested on your behalf.
Don't get me wrong, I like the browser tools too, and use them, but like the visibility and control I get from this option. Now, if there was a drop-in package for my pfSense firewall, I'd be set. Hm...
the state IS me
well, it should be me
to the extent the state is NOT an extension of my willpower is the same as the extent to which it is corrupted by corporate influence
some argue that because the government works against individual rights (since it is corrupted by powerful corporate interests), then the government should be reduced. however, this merely reduces the only (imperfect) buffer we have between our abusers (the corporate infection of our government) and our rights. with less government comes more abuse of our individual liberties. do you deny this? missed out on the gilded ages in your history lessons, huh?
the government, in theory, is beholden to our wishes. so therefore, we must insist that the government's idealistic purpose be adhered to as closely as possible. of course, it will never be perfect, but accepting the corporate infection of our government, or, even worse, arguing for even less protection from corporate abuse (by reducing the government) is clearly not a valid alternative. we must scrub our government of corporate infection, and be ever vigilant of the fungus's return
with a weaker government, a power vacuum will exist that will be filled by corporations, and your rights will certainly be abused. this is not science fiction, this is historical fact. do you fear your government's army and police? then why aren't you afraid of something like blackwater, a private, corporate-controlled army, that is CLEARLY not beholden to you, not even in theory, like your own elected government? didn't you learn from history? behold, blackwater 1.0:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency
why do some people not see the REAL source of the abuse of their individual liberties? the government is NOT THE REAL SOURCE
finally, some see government's regulations and rules as intrusions onto capitalism. some reading my words here will also conclude that i am anti-capitalist
on the contrary: the greatest enemy capitalism has ever known was never socialism or communism, but corporatism: monopolies and oligopolies. again, read your economic history. and PLEASE do not confuse the fight against corporatism as a fight against capitalism. if anything, the fight to reduce corporate influence and power in our lives is a fight FOR a purer more fair and level field in capitalism. the small smart start up company with a good idea, in pure capitalism, will reap much profit. in reality, the greatest threat to this small smart start up is not taxes, its not regulations: its entrenched big players, who abuse the government to change the rules to suit them, and otherwise take advantage of natural imperfections in the marketplace to keep smaller rivals at bay, to maintain the status quo, not maintain true capitalism
capitalism != corporatism
corporatism > communism + socialism, as a threat to capitalism
do NOT forget that, and do not confuse attacks on corporatism as attacks on capitalism, or you have failed to understand your own principles and the reality you live in
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
since the dawn of time, the rights of the INDIVIDUAL are pitted against the rights of the GROUP
pretty much the entire history of mankind is a narrative about this essential struggle
so some ancient greeks, a few others, and finally some american colonists said "hey, this abuse by the group sucks, but we still have to coordinate our activities if we are to survive as a strong entity able to fend off such abuse by large injust groups. so how do we do that? maybe this democracy thing, hmmm..."
and so began a silly experiment called democracy, which has always been messy, always imperfect, but still better than lying down and accepting horrible abuse at the hands of a group
so what i am saying is: yes, the government abused your rights, is abusing your rights, and will always abuse your rights. i understand and agree with that assessment completely, and offer no lala land tales about the wonderful joys of big government: i am not an idiot. but at least, in a democracy, in theory IT IS ACCOUNTABLE TO YOU and you have CIVIL AND LEGAL AVENUES FOR RECOURSE. you don't have to pick up a gun or throw a molotov cocktail to address your grievances. you can stand on a soap box or start a blog or a lawsuit instead. and if enough people agree with you, you begin to see satisfactory justice for your abuse, without violence
what about corporations? who or what are they accountable to? answer: profit, greed, make more bucks AT ANY COST. a corporation will clearly trample your rights in order to get more profit. a government will also trample your rights for various random goals. but only one of those entities allows you to say "this is not fair!" and if enough of your fellow citizens agree with you, the abuse is addressed, reversed, and not allowed
see my point?
because democracy is imperfect is no reason to accept something clearly worse. because the government nibbles your toes is no reason to accept or see as superior a world in which corporations gnaw your fingers off
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
to explain away the democratic element as ineffectual?
when the democratic element is the one extraordinary gem of your government which makes it so much better and superior (as a function of social stability and everything else that is important in the american experiment)
do not be dismissive or contemptuous of the idea that people should or could be allowed to govern themselves. it is the most important attribute of the american government and one you should trumpet and champion, not perform an autopsy on it as if it were already dead. it clearly is not. pessimists and nihilists and cynics are not realists, they're just assholes who've already given up the good fight and accepted the worst and are therefore part of what is wrong with the world. don't be one of those losers
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
#1: yes, it would be lovely if corporations were merely appendages of the government. unfortunately the truth is that our government is somewhat of an appendage of corporations
#2: corporations would trample on your rights with blackwater style private military forces and private prison systems in a heart beat, and some people in this country are working hard to make sure they can (whether they realize it or not). i'm not talking about science fiction, i'm talking about historical american fact:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency
if you fear police or military abuse by your government: if those who wish to weaken our government get their way, you haven't seen anything yet. you will see a lot worse. not fanciful conjecture, its historical fact from when corporations were able to run roughshod over american lives, the gilded age
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
which is something that is very frightening
however, we're this close to becoming a corporatocracy, and miles away from mob rule
priorities, please: i'm not going to worry that much about being bitten by a snake when there's a herd of buffalo bearing down on me
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Google "Proxomitron". It sits between the browser and the web acting like a proxy server and minces up HTML like a blender removing and breaking everything you don't want or need.
I've used it for years. F-ing awesome piece of software. Between that, spybot S+D immunize, avast antivirius active protection, erasing everything every time firefox/IE starts, and runnig things I find online in a sandbox, I'm golden.
Here's my idea for a solution.
Instead of every site trying to scrape and piece together my profile data, I'd rather opt in to store my basic profile info with my cable tv/cable internet provider, so they can target me with ads I care about, not only on the web, but on tv as well. This could be a boon for cable providers, that I would be willing to give in exchange for never capping my bandwidth.
A side benefit, as a single man, maybe I won't have to see any more tampon commercials.
A major function of the Federal Trade Commission is to keep advertisers honest. The current list of active scams includes bogus contests, work-at-home schemes, free credit reports, investment opportunities, credit repair, and vacation prizes. Old scams die out; the "free cable box" scam seems to have expired, and the used car business seems to have settled down to boredom. New scams are invented to replace them. Pre-paid phone cards with bogus fees are big right now. So the FTC has to change the rules keep up with the scammers.
The FTC's biggest win in recent years was the Do-Not-Call registry. Over 200 million numbers are now registered, and the FTC collected $40 million last year from violators of the Do-Not-Call list. The telemarketing industry hated that, but they lost. Annoying calls are way, way down. "Outbound telemarketing" in its dumb random-call form is almost dead.
With online advertising steadily becoming more intrusive, the FTC is taking a look at that. That's what they should be doing.
what is more likely to happen:
1. someone is going to get the government to revoke the corporate charters of bp or blackwater
2. bp or balckwater will create legislation suitable to their agenda and trampling on individual's rights
you tell me, #1 or #2
"you've got a causality problem there"
no sir, you have a causality problem
the puppet is our government, the puppeteer are corporations. i really don't udnerstand why you can't see that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You would have to be a moron with almost no exposure to a) family b) friends c) colleagues d) search engines, wikipedia, etc. in order to think that ads are an important source of information or that they add value to the consumer experience.
Therefore, I don't get why individualized targeting is good for me unless I'm interested in buying lots of overpriced and ill-conceived products/services. And I don't get why advertising and ad-financed sites need the targeting either: Advertising did just fine as a business before targeting of individuals ensued.
I am curious as to exactly what it is about re-targeting that bothers all of you so much? Is it simply the "creepy" factor?
It has been said, but it should be repeated; Those banner ads you see above every site do not work very well when simply targeted at a site level. Re-targeting is the only thing that makes it worth our while to spend our advertising dollars on them.
What solution would you propose to keep the lights on at all of the "free" sites you enjoy every day?
The paid-content approach has been a miserable failure (shocking, I know). This is not a flippant question, advertisers do not want unhappy consumer and site owners do not want unhappy visitors. We would all be open to other solutions, so long as ham-fisted bills based on fear and misunderstanding are not driving the discussion.
But make no mistake, advertisers are not stupid, we will not continue to pour money into banner ads if they cease to work for our clients.