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F R E N D Z of martian
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Not much of a surprise really...
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: GeeK: DoubleClick Doublecross
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 10:38:19 -0500 (EST)
From: Matt Ransford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
01/25/00- Updated 05:17 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cth211.htm
Activists charge DoubleClick double cross
Web users have lost privacy with the drop of a cookie, they say
By Will Rodger, USATODAY.com
Say goodbye to anonymity on the web.
DoubleClick Inc., the Internet's largest advertising company, has begun
tracking Web users by name and address as they move from one Web site to
the next, USATODAY.com has learned.
The practice, known as profiling, gives marketers the ability to know
the
household, and in many cases the precise identity, of the person
visiting
any one of the 11,500 sites that use DoubleClick's ad-tracking
"cookies."
What made such profiling possible was DoubleClick's purchase in June of
Abacus Direct Corp., a direct-marketing services company that maintains
a
database of names, addresses, telephone numbers and retail purchasing
habits of 90% of American households.
With the help of its online partners, DoubleClick can now correlate the
Abacus database of names with people's Internet activities.
Company spokeswoman Jennifer Blum said Tuesday that only about a dozen
sites are participating now. But she acknowledged that DoubleClick would
like all its partner sites to participate.
DoubleClick defends the practice, insisting that it allows better
targeting
of online ads -- and thus makes consumers' online experiences at once
more
relevant and more profitable for advertisers. The company calls it
"personalization."
Consumer advocates have another term for it: privacy invasion.
After being informed of DoubleClick's actions, several privacy activists
said they would file a formal complaint with the Federal Trade
Commission
next month.
"This is a blatant bait-and-switch trick," says Jason Catlett of
Junkbusters Inc., an Internet-privacy consultancy. "For four years they
have said (their services) don't identify you personally, and now
they're
admitting they are going to identify you."
To tie Doubleclick's "anonymous" records of your surfing habits to its
Abacus database, it needs only the cooperation of another site that can
identify you positively.
Futuristic though that sounds, positive identification is actually
simple.
DoubleClick need only tie your cookie to another one placed by a site
that
ships you something through the mail, or one which requires
registration.
To do that:
DoubleClick sends a cookie to your browser and gives it a unique ID
number.
Doubleclick sends the same ID number on to the site that knows who you
are.
That company then sends back the data that DoubleClick needs to look you
up in the Abacus database. And voila -- DoubleClick knows who you are,
too.
The combination of DoubleClick's cookie-derived information -- more than
100 million files -- with Abacus' database on the purchasing habits of
90
million households means the vast majority of Web-connected Americans
will
likely lose their online anonymity, says David Banisar, deputy director
of
Privacy International.
DoubleClick's Blum said she was not sure whether surfing habits tracked
by
DoubleClick before Abacus data are merged will be included in future
profiles.
DoubleClick executives maintain they still give users who don't want to
be
tracked a chance to opt out. "That person will receive notice that their
personal information is being gathered," DoubleClick Executive Vice
President and Abacus unit chief Jonathan Shapiro says flatly.
Yet, that chance to opt out comes only in the form of a few lines of
text
placed in the privacy policies of participating Web sites. Since those
policies are often buried two or three levels down, online consumers
will
seldom know what is being done with their personal information in the
first
place, let alone that they may opt out, activists say.
"That is not permission," Banisar says. "That is fraudulent on its
face."
Catlett, Banisar and the Electronic Privacy Information Center plan to
file
a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission by Feb. 16.
They say they will charge that DoubleClick has duped consumers by
suggesting the company's technology lets them remain anonymous. They
expect
to enlist a wide array of consumer groups to back their position.
Further troubling to privacy advocates is DoubleClick's refusal to say
which Internet sites are furnishing them the registration rolls that
DoubleClick needs to link once-anonymous cookies to names, addresses,
phone
numbers and catalog purchases.
"The fact that DoubleClick is not disclosing the names of the companies
who
are feeding them consumers' names is a shameful hypocrisy," Catlett
says.
"They are trying to protect the confidentiality of the violators of
privacy."
Shapiro Tuesday bristled at Catlett's characterization. Any company that
uses data from the Abacus database to target Internet ads must disclose
it
online, he says.
Moreover, he adds, DoubleClick itself would hand over to privacy
advocates
the list of participating companies if it could. But as in many lines of
business, partners frown when their relationships are disclosed without
their permission, he says.
"If they all bought a billboard and said they work with us, that would
be
great," Shapiro says.
The controversy over DoubleClick began last summer, when the company
announced it was buying Abacus Direct in a deal valued at more than $1
billion.
Privacy experts had feared that DoubleClick would begin merging the two
databases at some point. But they say they were unaware that DoubleClick
had begun its profiling practice late last year.
Before its Abacus purchase, DoubleClick had made its money by targeting
banner advertisements in less direct ways.
DoubleClick ad-serving computers, for instance, check the Internet
addresses of people who visit participating sites. Thus, people in their
homes may see ads different from those seen by workers at General
Motors,
or a machine-tool company in Ohio.
Every time viewers see or click on those banners, DoubleClick adds that
fact to individual dossiers it builds on them with the help of the
cookies
it drops on users' hard drives.
Those dossiers, in turn, help DoubleClick target ads more precisely
still,
increasing their relevance to consumers and reducing unnecessary
repetition.
Those cookies remained anonymous to DoubleClick until now.
Being tracked as they move around the Web "doesn't measure up to
people's
expectation on the Net," says Robert Smith, publisher of the newsletter
Privacy Journal. "They don't think that their physical locations, their
names will be combined with what they do on the Internet. If they
(DoubleClick) want to do that they have to expose that plan to the
public
and have it discussed."
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