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Does Using The Internet Mean Giving Up Privacy?

The FTC takes a close look at behavioral targeting and consumer education.
2009-12-08 08:48 by
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A slew of marketers, privacy watchdogs, and federal regulators were in Washington Monday to share ideas on a controversial topic: behavioral targeting.

The Federal Trade Commission invited privacy advocates and advertising industry leaders to the first of what will be three public brainstorming sessions on targeted advertising and how consumer information is collected and used online. Representatives from consumer protection agencies, such as Consumer Federation of America and the Center for Digital Democracy championed increased user control of the information that ad networks, exchanges, and data firms collect while Web users browse and barter online. With them, cheering on self-regulatory practices, were gurus from Google, Intel, Microsoft, and third-party data collection company BlueKai.

The chatter surrounding behavioral targeting and consumer privacy is heating up. Last month the FTC and a House subcommittee invited consumer protection advocates and ad experts in for private briefings. Regulators want to know more about how sophisticated marketers are reaching consumers online. They know that Internet, advertising and publishing companies are dumping money into technology that gives them the ability to track consumers and display to them only the ads that are most relevant to them.

Privacy pushers and government regulators aren't convinced consumers really know what's going on. A repeated question: Do consumers who opt into the Internet opt out of privacy? Every time consumers go online, their movements are tracked by digital cookie codes, says FTC chairman Jonathan Leibowitz. "How many people know how to distinguish a first-party cookie from a third- party cookie? How many people know what a ‘cookie’ is?" he said.

Read the full Forbes story -here-

 

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by trogers - 2009-12-09 08:11
Been aware of issue with identity since using the net in 2002. They can try with all their tricks, but they can only catch my pseudo identity...LOL

Never use my real identity, and never done any business transaction on it either.
Use the net only for gathering and exchange of ideas and info.
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