Privacy Option Proposed To Control Behavioral Ads

techinsider sends this quote from Security Week: "A group of media and marketing trade associations, with support from the Council of Better Business Bureaus, today announced the details of a self-regulatory program designed to give consumers enhanced control over the collection and use of data regarding their Web viewing for online behavioral advertising purposes. The program promotes the use of the 'Advertising Option Icon' and accompanying language, to be displayed within or near online advertisements or on Web pages where data is collected and used for behavioral advertising. The Advertising Option Icon indicates a company's use of online behavioral advertising and adherence to the Principles guiding the program. Similar to a Web site’s privacy policy, consumers will be able to link to a clear disclosure statement regarding the company's online behavioral advertising data collection and use practices as well as an easy-to-use opt-out option."

Comments

Re:TRUSTe all over again?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, and it the same attorney who has been doing this for years. he has been representing the DMA for decades. Every time there are proposed regulations they form a new org that does nothing. Like TRUSTe, complaints will be useless and they will never take action against their members (who pay the bills!)

Re:It's a trap!

[rakuen]

You can do even better. Use CSS to hide it behind another image. Then you can't even find it accidentally!

Re:TRUSTe all over again?

[mlts]

Expectations of privacy. Ad companies want people to think that anything on the Web is public for any to see. This way, in court cases, the judge just finds the ad company not guilty because the plaintiff has no reasonable expectation of privacy on the Web, as per what other people think.

The only good thing is that there are so many sheep out there that ad companies are not reacting to people who use AdBlock or other means of security. However, I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before most sites become like Hulu and offer anything other than a "Go away" message on the front page. Of course, the next step will be add-ons or Greasemonkey scripts that fake cookies and identifying info, and the arms race will go on.

Time to register your copy of sandboxie and VMWare Workstation. I'm sure we will get more pretty feel good crap like this coupled with more invasive shared objects stored by add-ons in our future.

Re:Abuse

[hedwards]

Indeed, here in the US, they've made exceptions for all the people that we really don't want to hear from, ie., politicians. During election season it's terrible. 7 or 8 calls a day, frequently from a robocaller. Charities aren't quite as bad, but still they call frequently enough as to be an annoyance.

Re:TRUSTe all over again?

[Chaonici]

a search engine that specifically advertised privacy

You mean like startpage, a search engine powered by Ixquick that doesn't record your IP address?

well if they are not stupid

[RobertLTux]

47CFR64.1200 (thats the Code of Federal Regulations Volumne 47 section 64 subsection 1200)
or as it is formally known
TITLE 47--TELECOMMUNICATION

                CHAPTER I--FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION (CONTINUED)

PART 64_MISCELLANEOUS RULES RELATING TO COMMON CARRIERS--
Table of Contents

    Subpart L_Restrictions on Telemarketing, Telephone Solicitation, and
                                                    Facsimile Advertising

of course you will have a somewhat different actual law but...
if they think you live this far south then you
1 ask for their name
2 ask for the "company they are calling on behalf of"
3 ask them for a call back number (must be a non toll number)
4 bonus points if you are on the CA DNC list

of course 99.999% of the time they will drop the call once you inform them that you are invoking 47CFR64.1200
(of course if you can invoke the CA version thats even better)