[Infowarrior] - Watch Out for Online Ads That Watch You

[Richard Forno]

 Watch Out for Online Ads That Watch You

Dan TynanMon Jan 29, 2:00 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/128272&printer=1;_ylt=AicP0ZQN7J7S3ysT01JlGi
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You can keep at least some behavioral-ad cookies at bay by opting out of the
services at the Network Advertising Initiative's site.Online ads are not
only booming--and scrolling, spinning, shaking, shouting, and singing--they
are also watching you even as you are viewing them, capturing your click
patterns to create more detailed profiles than traditional browser cookies
do.

Behavioral marketing networks such as BlueLithium, Revenue Science, and
Tacoda display ads based on your browsing habits. Spending on these
behavioral ads will grow from $1.5 billion in 2007 to more than $2 billion
next year, according to eMarketer, a market research firm. And the company
expects video ads to account for more than a third of that total.

The networks say that behavioral ads are more effective for advertisers, and
usually less intrusive for consumers, than are standard pop-ups or adware.
But the potential for abuse is troubling, privacy advocates claim, and the
vast majority of Netizens have no idea that their actions are being tracked
so closely.

Visit any of the 1000-plus sites on BlueLithium's ad network, and your PC
will get a cookie that records the Web pages you visit, the ads you click,
and whether you bought anything. The network then delivers ads based on your
interests: Shop for cell phones at one site, and you might see ads for
handsets at another, unrelated site, while someone with other interests
would see a different ad. Unless you keep a close watch on your browser
cookies, though, you'd never know you were being targeted. BlueLithium chief
marketing officer Dakota Sullivan declines to name any of the company's
clients, but says that they include 70 of the 100 most popular sites.
Sneaky Cookies

Last November, the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest
Research Group filed a 50-page complaint with the Federal Trade Commission,
claiming that such techniques by behavioral ad networks were unfair and
deceptive marketing tactics.

"There's nothing wrong with serving an ad targeted to what users are
interested in," says Jeff Chester, the CDD's executive director. "But you
need to tell consumers exactly what you're doing and get their permission
before you follow them from site to site."

Shortly after the complaint was filed, Tacoda said that it would
periodically run ads on its network disclosing how it uses tracking cookies,
and that it would set the cookies to expire after a year.

The Tacoda site features a prominent link to the Network Advertising
Initiative's opt-out page, where consumers can turn off the tracking cookies
from Tacoda, Revenue Science, and five other online ad networks (click on
the thumbnail screenshot at the top of this article for a view of this
page). NAI executive director Trevor Hughes says that, in addition,
consumers can protect themselves by reading privacy policies and by
carefully managing their cookies.

Revenue Science chief executive officer Bill Gossman says the way his
company captures Web surfing data makes it "nearly impossible" to merge
clicks with users' personal information. "If a new corporate owner, the
government, or anyone else asked us to provide data on an individual user,
we most likely could not do so," he says.

BlueLithium's Sullivan claims that linking a person to a surfing history
would be relatively easy for companies with information on both, but doing
so would ignite a firestorm of public criticism.
Database Risk

As Web entities continue to consolidate and corporate giants such as
Microsoft enter the behavioral ad business, consumer advocates fear that the
razor-thin boundaries between anonymous clickstreams and personally
identifiable data could dissolve.

The risk? "Once a database exists, people often dream up ways to use it,"
says Peter Swire, an Ohio State University law professor and former privacy
advisor to the Clinton administration. "Notice and effective choice by
consumers are the way to go."
Dan Tynan