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Study: Ad Networks Not Honoring Do-Not-Track
itwbennett writes "According to a new study from Stanford University's Center for Internet Society, almost half of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) members that Stanford studied left tracking cookies in place after a Web user opted out of targeted ads. NAI's executive director said that with no consensus on what do-not-track means, ad networks continue to gather data for business reasons other than providing targeted advertising. 'Under the NAI self-regulatory code, companies commit to providing an opt out to the use of online data for online behavioral advertising purposes,' Curran said. 'But the NAI code also recognizes that companies sometimes need to continue to collect data for operational reasons that are separate from ad targeting based on a user's online behavior.'"
These are three things I like.
You can probably still track me if I visit you site, but I'm damned if I'm going to help you.
Unlike the government the 'invisible hand' is not watching our back. Of course, the reason the government is watching our back is because it is looking for an opportune time to stick a knife in it.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
For those people who tried to argue against Adblock and other tools to help users control how their information is used and how their browsing experience plays out, this should take the wind out of their sails at least a little. Browser developers and advertising companies came up with a standard for not tracking the users who don't want to be tracked and the ad companies promptly turned around and fucked those users over. Why should we respect the wishes of marketers who don't want us blocking ads now?
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The government will stab you in the back. Globalist multinationals will stab you in the front. It's a two-headed monster.
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"Hi, we would like you to voluntarily limit your sources of revenue by not giving your customers, advertisers, the tracking options that they want."
doesn't work folks
sorry, the market doesn't regulate itself in some respects. mostly in those respects that involve moral behavior. you need regulation and enforcement for that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's still there but even with it checked I still keep seeing slashvertisements for Bitcoin. It must be broken.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I work as a software engineer for an affiliate networking advertising company. Our business wouldn't exist if we couldn't track a click from a publisher (affiliate, like a deal blog or a search engine) to an advertiser (merchant, somebody selling stuff). I am extremely familiar with how we handle customer data, and we have no use for it. Our tracking technology aggregates the majority of the information related to sales fairly early on in the data pipeline and discards a lot of it after a relatively short time (hours). We have external and internal auditors that check up on the methods we use to clean personally identifiable information (PII, as they always call it). Even something as relatively benign as our own client's e-mail addresses are secure. When it comes to the likes of our actual advertisements, our company culture is nearing paranoia about NOT storing PII because even an accidental leak would reflect poorly on our clients and be devastating to our business. I really hope the other advertising companies see the risk of collecting this information as expensive as we do and take as much effort to avoid letting it be traceable back to individuals.
I have to say this: the opinions and statements are my own and not those of my company in any way.
My experience has been that most new government regulation is designed to "fix" problems that were created by government regulation in the first place. When the market has been abused (almost always the result of government regulations), it results in government regulations that make the market even more susceptible to abuse.
It has gotten to bad that the current administration has the guts to call for new laws and regulations to "fix" a problem that was created by them actively not enforcing current laws and regulations (look into "Operation Fast & Furious").
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I don't get all the hype with the Do-Not-Track, because from the beginning, I had zero faith in the method. Frankly, it's almost funny to read this now, when I knew this to be exactly what would happen. If not worse.
I mean, do you trust in a sign you'd put up on your front door, saying "Do not rob"? Thought so.
On Internet anno 2011, in the world we live in, with the kind of overpopulation and hunt for resources and money, the kiddie stuff that is "Do not track" does not work, at least not for your common greyzone law hustlers. The thinking needs to go in to other places, like a comfortable cookie policy that can also communicate to and from the user. So that people save some cookies they want, and reject the others. I could go on and on, but it's not really that hard, but I am surprised this "Do not track" thing has gotten so far off the ground. One would think it'd die in infancy, like all the other obviously lousier ideas.