Opting out of Targeted Ads Too Hard, Privacy Advocates Say - 0 views
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Karl Wabst on 04 Jun 09OPT-OUT becomes untenable when users have to visit 40 - 50 or more sites to do it.
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Karl Wabst on 04 Jun 09The online advertising industry and U.S. policy makers need to give online users more control over the collection of personal data and surfing habits beyond the traditional opt-out approach, some privacy advocates said Wednesday. Dozens of online ad networks allow users to opt out of being tracked as a way to deliver behavioral advertising, and in most cases, the opt-out is stored in a cookie that goes away every time the users clear their browser cookies, privacy advocates said during a discussion of online advertising at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in Washington, D.C. Some advertisers require that people opt out of targeted advertising every month, and some advertisers make the opt-out link difficult to find, said Christopher Soghoian, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Some opt-out mechanisms aren't even functional, he said. Soghoian, while creating a single opt-out mechanism for the Firefox browser, found more than 40 advertising networks, he said. "How can we expect consumers to visit 40 or 50 different online advertisers, opt out, then revisit these sites every six months or every year, and then, when they delete their cookies, go back again?" he asked.