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A Harvard University fellow has developed a browser extension that stops advertising networks from tracking a person's surfing habits, such as search queries and content they view on the Web. The extension, called Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO), enables its users to opt out of 27 advertising networks that are employing behavioral advertising systems, wrote Christopher Soghoian, who developed it, on his Web site. Soghoian, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and a doctoral candidate at Indiana University, modified a browser extension Google released under an Apache 2 open-source license. Google's opt-out plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox blocks cookies delivered by its Doubleclick advertising network. A cookie is a small data file stored in a browser that can track a variety of information, such as Web sites visited and search queries, and transmit that information back to the entity that placed the cookie in the browser. Google's opt-out plugin comes as the company announced plans last week to Target advertisements based on the sites people visit. Targeted advertising is seen as a way for advertisers to more precisely find potential customers as well as for Web site publishers to charge higher advertising rates. But the behavioral advertising technologies have raised concern over how consumers get enrolled in the programs, what data is being tracked and how the data is protected.

Google will unveil new privacy measures today that will give consumers more control over behavioral targeting. Now, when Google serves banner ads on outside publishers' sites, the ads will include links that provide more information explaining why they were served. Clicking through will lead to details about the company's behavioral advertising program, which categorizes consumers as interested in particular types of goods or services based on the sites they visited. The program is only in beta for now, but once Google signs up publishers, consumers will be able to view the categories they have been placed in--such as "interested in travel"--and also tell Google to remove them from whatever buckets they wish. Consumers also will be able to opt out of the program permanently via a browser plug-in. Or, if people want to receive ads for certain types of products, they can edit their profiles to reflect that--in effect, opting in to particular types of ads. Google's new measures come at a time when online behavioral targeting is facing increased scrutiny. Last month, two Federal Trade Commissioners warned that the online advertising industry could face new laws if it didn't take steps to self-regulate on privacy issues. Recently, Google rival Yahoo announced enhancements to its privacy policies. Among other changes, Yahoo said it would allow consumers to opt out of behavioral targeting on its own site. Google's move drew praise from the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Mike Zaneis, vice president for public policy. "It's really a consumer empowerment tool, which is great," he said. "It's one more example of how industry is competing on the privacy issue, to the benefit of consumers--and also to the benefit of businesses."

Yahoo Tuesday announced that has developed a feature that will allow users to opt out of behavioral targeting on mobile devices. "We believe the mobile experience should offer the same privacy protections consumers expect to find on the PC," Yahoo said in a blog post announcing the feature. "Furthermore, management of privacy protections should be available via any mobile device, whether that's an iPhone or a Blackberry." Many companies that track people's Web activity on PCs and send them ads notify users about the practice and allow them to opt out. But it's still unusual for behavioral targeting companies in the mobile space to let people opt out. At least a dozen companies say they offer some form of mobile behavioral targeting. But only two appear to allow users to opt out, according to Jules Polonetsky, co-chair and director of the think tank Future of Privacy Forum.

Look for almost a dozen consumer groups and privacy advocates to launch a full-court press on targeted behavioral advertising and online privacy on Capitol Hill next week. According to a source, those groups on Sept. 1 will release a background paper, letters to House members and other documents to make their case for stronger government oversight of online marketing targeted to kids. "A growing number of child advocacy and health groups have called on the FTC and Congress to prohibit the behavioral targeting of both children and teens, next week, many leading consumer and privacy groups will send a letter to congressional leaders calling for similar safeguards," confirms Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. Chester saidd that 10 groups will be involved in the push, and that they will be "pressing Congress to write legislation that truly protects consumer privacy, but enables online marketing to flourish in a more responsible fashion." The effort comes as Congress prepares to return from its summer break. House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) has made an online privacy bill a legislative priority in this session of Congress.

Lawmakers took aim at privacy practices of cable and Internet providers Thursday at a House subcommittee hearing, laying the groundwork for the introduction of legislation that could restrict companies' ability to target ads at consumers online. The focus of the hearing was on new efforts by Internet providers to collect and share data on consumers' behavior to target online advertising and by cable companies to target ads at subscribers via their set-top boxes. Lawmakers are concerned about consumer privacy as cable, phone and Internet companies experiment with Internet-based technologies that pinpoint advertising to consumers in new and more accurate ways. Legislation to impose tougher privacy rules could be coming later this summer.

Cablevision Systems announced it will expand its addressable-advertising capabilities to be able to deliver TV spots based on an individual subscriber's demographic data to some 500,000 households across the New York metro area this summer. The half-million-homes deployment -- representing cable's largest with addressable advertising to date -- comes after an 18-month trial covering 100,000 households, in which Cablevision tested the targeted form advertising for its Optimum-branded services. According to Cablevision, the trial showed a "double-digit" lift in sales in areas that received the addressable ads compared with homes that did not. After building out to 500,000 households across multiple zones within the New York DMA, Cablevision ultimately expects to bring addressability to all of its 2.8 million digital TV subscribers. The expanded deployment includes unidentified "top national brands," represented by media agencies GroupM, Starcom MediaVest Group and Universal McCann. Cablevision said it already has placed addressable ads from outside advertisers, but it has not identified those customers publicly. Addressable advertising, considered a holy grail of advertising in combining broad reach with demographic targeting, is also a core part of the mission for Canoe Ventures, the joint venture of Cablevision and five other MSOs. But Canoe, at least initially, will provide targeting at the zone level not the household level. Independent of Canoe, Cablevision is moving ahead on several advanced-advertising initiatives. Earlier this week Cablevision and its Rainbow Media programming unit announced plans to offer interactive advertising products and applications to media buyers during this year's upfronts, which would be available in inventory on five Rainbow networks and be viewable to Cablevision digital cable subscribers. To deliver addressable advertising, Cablevision is using technology from Visible World, a New York-based company that works with more than

Profile Optimization True Story: I'm at a party a few months ago - not the usual raucous affair that us search and social media types get into but a full on wine and cheese extravaganza. The kind of shindig Republicans go to and then accuse Democrats of loving when they get up in front of a "Joe the Plumber" type crowd. But I digress… After far too much wine the discussion turned to crazy work environments and I naturally brought up the Fortress of Googletude and it's predilection for hallway scooter parking and riding. A fellow party-go-er who I'll call "Natasha" to protect her identity, nodded and said, 'Yes it's true, I've been there too!" This led to a long, room-clearing talk about search and social media, the kind of talk that true geeks engage in while their spouses go off to chat about politics and religion. Somewhere between bottles Natasha said to me "Have you seen Google People Search?" "Google what now?" I replied. She went on to describe an internally searchable database that the Google folks showed her of people sorted by interests and web habits, ready to be rolled out to advertisers at some point in the future. Thank goodness for the red wine clause in their NDA. Well the future arrived today, at least partially, with Google's announcement that behavioral targeting is being rolled out to the AdWords content network. As the Googlelords put it: "With interest-based advertising, you will be able to reach users based on your past interactions with them, such as their visits to your website. We'll also provide interest categories, such as "sports enthusiasts," so you can reach the audience of your choice. Whether your goal is to drive brand awareness or increase responses to your ads, these capabilities can help expand the success of your campaigns." This is a most effective riposte to the OPA's announcement of new, ludicrous banner ad standards - why futz around with annoying crap no-one will clic

The authorities in Brussels fired a warning shot across the bows of online advertisers today, signalling new rules to combat surfer profiling and breaches of privacy in the interests of commercial gain. In the strongest denunciation of the conduct of online advertisers, Meglena Kuneva, the European commissioner for consumer affairs, argued that personal data has become "the oil of the internet and the new currency of the digital world". She warned that surfers' privacy rights were being abused by the amassing of personal information and its supply to advertisers who targeted individuals who were often unaware of what was happening. "From the point of view of commercial communications the world wide web is turning out to be the world wild west. This could be very damaging," Kuneva told a meeting of industry professionals and analysts in Brussels. "Consumer rights must adapt to technology, not be crushed by it. The current situation with regard to privacy, profiling, and targeting is not satisfactory." The commissioner outlined European laws regulating the protection of privacy, commercial contracts, and countering discrimination, and indicated that the regulations were failing to keep up with the pace of developments on the internet. She called on the online advertising industry to come up with a voluntary code of conduct to protect consumer and privacy rights, but clearly signalled that the EU authorities would probably have to legislate to prevent abuses. The volume of personal data collected on the internet was growing exponentially and was increasingly being used for commercial purposes by tracking surfers' browsing habits, using cookies, and making the information available for individual profiling and targeting of consumers, she said.

"Lora Bentley spoke with Anzen analysts Megan Brister and Jordan Prokopy via e-mail regarding behavioral advertising - what companies are doing, what regulators want to do and what we, as advertising consumers, need to know. With their coworker Miyo Yamashita, the analysts recently wrote a guest opinion for IT Business Edge. Bentley: Why are so many concerned about privacy when it comes to behavioral advertising? What is it about the Internet that convinces consumers that information they share there is not being used? Brister and Prokopy: Most concerns stem from the lack of transparency around data disclosure practices. While consumers may value a Web site's product and service offerings, they are generally unaware that businesses share their information with an extensive group of other businesses in order to deliver targeted advertising. This group includes news Web sites, advertising networks, profiling services, and Web analytics providers, to name a few. As Pamela Jones Harbour, a Commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), discussed at the FTC Roundtable earlier this week, there is an asymmetry between consumer perceptions and business realities. Once consumers are informed of businesses' data handling practices, they will want to have more control over how businesses manage their information. As we discuss in our article, some businesses engaged in online behavioral advertising have been slow to adopt transparent consumer data management policies. This is a concern particularly for vulnerable groups, such as minors or non-English speaking consumers, because they may not understand legally written policies. Consumer advocacy groups argue that without knowledge and control over the collection, use, and disclosure of data, Web sites may misuse or expose sensitive data about consumers' health, lifestyles and finances."

"It could be quite a manic Monday for digital advertisers. Privacy advocates are calling Dec. 7 "Pearl Harbor Day" for the Internet advertising industry as the Federal Trade Commission launches its public roundtables on consumer privacy issues. Certainly many members of the public as well as legislators are up in arms over practices such as behavioral tracking and targeting, but a great deal of this anxiety comes down to a lack of knowledge regarding practices. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has been applying preventative measures, including releasing "Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising". Its latest effort is the consumer education campaign "Privacy Matters," which will be featured on a broad array of media sites. It's a conciliatory recognition that the industry has released paranoia in the general populace by not clearly explaining the nuts and bolts of targeting and other advances."

If behavioral targeting is the key to providing Web users with advertising that's better tailored to their particular needs and interests--instead of banner ads that they ignore--then what's the harm to consumers? That was a central question tackled by a panel of privacy and online marketing experts Thursday at the OMMA Behavioral conference in New York. Whether online user tracking--even when anonymous--represents a growing threat to privacy has become a hotly debated issue in the last year, with FTC, Congress and state governments considering increased regulation of behavioral targeting. For Jules Polonetsky, co-chair and director of the AT&T-funded think tank Future of Privacy Forum, that debate has become almost superfluous. Whatever side one takes, he emphasized that there is now a widespread perception among consumers and regulators that online tracking is creepy at the very least. The key to diffusing the controversy is for publishers and marketers to give Web users notice that their behavior is being tracked in order to provide them with more relevant content, recommendations and marketing offers.

On November 1 and 2, 2007, the Federal Trade Commission will host a Town Hall entitled "Ehavioral Advertising: Tracking, Targeting, and Technology." The event will bring together consumer advocates, industry representatives, technology experts, and academics to address consumer protection issues raised by the practice of tracking consumers' activities online to Target advertising - or "behavioral advertising." The Town Hall is a follow-on to a dialogue on behavioral advertising that emerged at a November 2006 FTC forum, "Tech-Ade," which examined the key technological and business developments that will shape consumers' core experiences in the coming ten years. In addition, several consumer privacy advocates, as well as the State of New York, recently sent letters to the FTC asking it to examine the effects of behavioral advertising on consumer privacy. The Town Hall will explore how the online advertising market, and specifically behavioral advertising, has changed in recent years, and what changes are anticipated over the next five years. Among other things, it will examine what types of consumer data are collected, how such data are used, what protections are provided for that data, and the costs and benefits of behavioral advertising to consumers. The Town Hall will also address what companies are disclosing to consumers and what consumers understand about the online collection of their information for use in advertising. In addition, the Town Hall will look at what regulatory and self-regulatory measures currently govern the practices related to online behavioral advertising, as well as anticipated changes in the behavioral advertising space in the future. The Commission invites interested parties to submit requests to be panelists and to recommend other topics for discussion. The requests should be submitted electronically to behavioraladvertising_requests@ftc.gov by September 14, 2007. The Commission asks interested parties to include a stat

Online targeted advertising and the collection of consumer data are the fuel of Internet commerce, not the major privacy problems described by some advocates and U.S. lawmakers, according to a new paper. "The use of such data permits firms to target their marketing messages to consumers' interests, pays for a wealth of content on the Internet, and helps protect consumers from a variety of online threats," said the paper, released Monday by the Technology Policy Institute (TPI), an antiregulation think tank. "It forms the basis for many of the business models that are fueling the growth of the Internet." Privacy groups want a "free lunch" online, with strong privacy controls that make it tougher for advertising to work online, the paper said. "Privacy advocates have provided little detail on the benefits of more privacy and have typically ignored the costs or trade-offs associated with increasing privacy," the paper said. Data collection delivers ads that people want and that advertising pays for a multitude of free services online, said the paper, co-authored by TPI President Thomas Lenard and Emory University law and economics professor Paul Rubin.

A recent talk by some Federal Trade Commission officials confirms that the agency is taking a hard look at online advertising practices. Speaking at an American Bar Association conference, new consumer protection chief David Vladeck had harsh words for the behavioral targeting industry's current privacy practices. The "current approach is not working," he said, according to the law firm Arnold & Porter, which blogged about the speech. Vladeck reportedly said many companies' current practice of notifying users about online ad targeting and allowing them to opt out is inadequate, largely because people don't understand the policies. He's not the first to make this observation. Advocates and policymakers have said for years that privacy policies are incomprehensible even to sophisticated users. A recent study by UC Berkeley School also shows that the policies are filled with enough loopholes as to be meaningless. Meanwhile, consumer protection deputy Eileen Harrington, who also talked at the same event, reportedly called deep packet inspection the most dangerous form of data collection, according to a blog post by the law firm Perkins Coie.

Visit the Amazon.com site to buy a book online and your welcome page will include recommendations for other books you might enjoy, including the latest from your favorite authors, all based on your history of purchases. Most customers appreciate these suggestions, much the way they would recommendations by a local librarian. But, what if you visited an investment site, only to find advertising messages suggesting therapies for your recently diagnosed heart condition? Chances are that you would experience what Fran Maier calls the "creepiness" factor, a sense that someone has been snooping into a part of your life that should remain private. Maier is the Executive Director of TrustE, a nonprofit that sets guidelines for online privacy and awards a seal of approval to companies meeting those guidelines. She was a speaker at the recent Supernova conference, an annual technology event in San Francisco organized by Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin Werbach in collaboration with Wharton. Creepiness Factor The creepiness factor is a risk inherent in so-called behavioral targeting. This practice is based on marketers anonymously observing a user's behavior on the Internet and compiling a personal profile based on interests and behavior -- sites visited, searches conducted, articles read, even emails written and received. Based on their profiles, users receive advertising targeted specifically to them, regardless of where they travel on the web. Consumer advocates worry that online data collection and tracking is going too far. Marketing executives counter that consumers benefit from seeing advertising relevant to their interests and contend that relinquishing some personal data is a reasonable trade-off for free access to Internet content, much of it supported by advertising.

"A key, centrist digital rights group is set to put out a report calling for strong federal privacy laws and guidelines to regulate the growing tracking and targeting of Americans online. It argues that the self-regulation approach that industry fights for just hasn't worked. The online ad industry has "historically failed to fully implement its self-regulatory principles," according to the 34-page draft report by the Center for Democracy and Technology. CDT is a centrist D.C. group that works with and is substantially funded by the tech industry, including companies like Facebook, Google and AOL that are deeply invested in targeted ads. "Recently revised self-regulatory principles still fall short (.pdf) even as written," charges the draft, obtained by Wired.com. These tough words spearhead a new tactic for a group more used to convening inside-the-Beltway tech policy forums than launching ACLU-style send-outraged-e-mail campaigns. The CDT, which splintered off from the rabble-rousing Electronic Frontier Foundation 15 years ago, is also planning to launch a "Take Back Your Privacy" campaign on Thursday, designed to garner support for its call for comprehensive federal privacy legislation. Dozens of tech firms, known and obscure, record users' behaviors as they interact with search engines, blogs, e-commerce sites and even government websites. The tracking goes on in the background with little knowledge by consumers and even less oversight from government authorities. The tech industry - like others subject to potentially blunt-forced government regulation - has argued that policing itself was enough to prevent egregious privacy intrusions that could proliferate without any real chance individuals would even be aware of them."

""So many people in America think this does not affect them. They've been convinced that these programs are only targeted at suspected terrorists. … I think that's wrong. … Our programs are not perfect, and it is inevitable that totally innocent Americans are going to be affected by these programs," former CIA Assistant General Counsel Suzanne Spaulding tells FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith in Spying on the Home Front. 9/11 has indelibly altered America in ways that people are now starting to earnestly question: not only perpetual orange alerts, barricades and body frisks at the airport, but greater government scrutiny of people's records and electronic surveillance of their communications. The watershed, officials tell FRONTLINE, was the government's shift after 9/11 to a strategy of pre-emption at home -- not just prosecuting terrorists for breaking the law, but trying to find and stop them before they strike. President Bush described his anti-terrorist measures as narrow and targeted, but a FRONTLINE investigation has found that the National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in wiretapping and sifting Internet communications of millions of Americans; the FBI conducted a data sweep on 250,000 Las Vegas vacationers, and along with more than 50 other agencies, they are mining commercial-sector data banks to an unprecedented degree."

It affects each & every US citizen in one way or another. Good video on privacy & security.

A new malware variant called Silon is targeting Internet Explorer users, attempting to intercept their sessions and steal credentials. "Researchers at security vendor Trusteer Inc. issued an advisory warning that the Silon Trojan can detect when a user initiates a Web login session in Internet Explorer. It intercepts the login session, encrypts the data and sends it to a command-and-control server where it is collected with credentials from other victims. In a more sophisticated attack, the Trojan targets people logging into their online bank accounts. New York, N.Y.-based Trusteer said Silon can inject sophisticated dynamic HTML code into the login flow between the user and their bank's Web server. The method involves using a webpage displaying a phony message asking the victim to verify their login details. If the victim complies with the request, the login credentials are sent to the command-and-control server, said Amit Klein, chief technology officer of Trusteer. "

"Identity theft can happen to anyone," is the frequent refrain of government and advocacy groups warning consumers about bank fraud. What they don't add: The crime is far more likely when that "anyone" is a woman. A study released Monday by the fraud-tracking firm Javelin Research showed that women are 26% more likely than men to be the victims of identity theft. While 3.8% of men had their banking details stolen and used for fraud in the last year, 4.8% of women were victimized. And women took far longer on average to discover their financial identities had been compromised, leading to far greater risk of repeat fraud: Women took 83 days to detect they'd been targeted, compared with 45 days for men. The growing reason behind this disparity, argues Javelin President James Van Dyke, is an often-misunderstood trend: Digital commerce is making identity theft harder, rather than easier. Because men are statistically more likely than women to adopt newer technologies such as online banking and shopping, they more often have the benefit of high-tech safeguards, Van Dyke says. Women, because of their lesser use of Web banking and sales, suffer from more old-fashioned fraud caused by stolen credit cards or retail employees, he says. Fifty-eight percent of women, for instance, have never banked online, compared with 55% of men, according to Javelin's study. That means women are less likely to sign up for fraud protection programs like text message or e-mail alerts that warn of abnormal transactions. Twenty-three percent of men use e-mail alerts, compared with 15% of women; 8% of men receive text message warnings, compared with just 3% of women.

To address important consumer privacy concerns associated with online behavioral advertising, the staff of the Federal Trade Commission today released a set of proposed principles to guide the development of self-regulation in this evolving area. Behavioral advertising is the tracking of a consumer's activities online - including the searches the consumer has conducted, the Web pages visited, and the content viewed - in order to deliver advertising targeted to the individual consumer"s interests. For more than a decade, the FTC has engaged in investigation, law enforcement, studies, and other privacy developments to protect consumers' privacy online. Concepts used to develop the principles emerged from the agency's longstanding privacy program and, more recently, from two conferences hosted by the FTC. In the fall of 2006, a three-day public hearing, "Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade," examined technology developments that could raise consumer protection policy issues, including privacy, over the next decade. This past November, building on the Tech-ade hearings, the FTC hosted a Town Hall entitled "Ehavioral Advertising: Tracking, targeting, and Technology," to focus in on privacy issues raised by behavioral advertising. "The purpose of this proposal is to encourage more meaningful and enforceable self-regulation to address the privacy concerns raised with respect to behavioral advertising. In developing the principles, FTC staff was mindful of the need to maintain vigorous competition in online advertising as well as the importance of accommodating the wide variety of business models that exist in this area," according to its proposal "Behavioral Advertising: Moving the Discussion Forward to Possible Self-Regulatory Principles." The proposal states that behavioral advertising provides benefits to consumers in the form of free content and personalized advertising but notes that this practice is largely invisible and unknown to consumers. To address the