Web Firms Tell Congress They Track Behavior Without Consent

[cal04]

Source: Washington Post

Several Internet and broadband companies have acknowledged using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers, according to letters released yesterday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

And Google, the leading online advertiser, stated that it has begun using Internet tracking technology that enables it to more precisely follow Web-surfing behavior across affiliated sites.

The revelations came in response to a bipartisan inquiry of how more than 30 Internet companies might have gathered data to target customers. Some privacy advocates and lawmakers said the disclosures help build a case for an overarching online-privacy law.

"Increasingly. there are no limits technologically as to what a company can do in terms of collecting information . . . and then selling it as a commodity to other providers," said committee member Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who created the Privacy Caucus 12 years ago. "Our responsibility is to make sure that we create a law that, regardless of the technology, includes a set of legal guarantees that consumers have with respect to their information."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102270.html?hpid=topnews

[nc4bo]

1. Cookies?

They'll start using this information for alot more than shopping, I bet.

On a completely different track (sorta) our guvmit would like to know what we're doing online too.

Information is freely available worldwide, for now.

[boppers]

2. This is news?

I'm an internet geek by trade, and I thought this was common knowledge. Heck, it's a *feature* to show people books that they're interested in, news stories that they're interested in, and (conversely) not try to sell Viagra to teenage girls or Hannah Montana albums to Physics Professors...

Didn't everybody already know we were doing this?

[Dr.Phool]

3. It takes Congress a while to get a clue.

[boppers]

4. Wait, we've actually had similar systems in place for 50-80 years...

Junk mail has been doing this for ages...

Is it just that congress discovered that there's new technology, where they can get new campaign contributions by passing legislation approving of specific business tactics?

(Who, me? Jaded?) :D

[nc4bo]

6. weeeeeeeeell, maybe if they were talking about keyloggers and "other stuff"..

they may have something to be afraid about hehe. I'm sure there are plenty of juicy bits flying around the keyboards of congress haha.

But didn't I read somewhere that the Chinese or Russians were hacking into the system? Made a big ta-do about it then the story faded away.

Wonder if they ever got to the bottom of that one?

[Stand and Fight]

9. And the case of Amazon -- since you mention books...

Users have the ability to disable that feature. In ration to Google, they can if they decide to NOT sign into iGoogle. Either way, this is a revelation because it goes beyond cookies and/or simple server-side sessions... The information they are collecting could very well be responsible for some of the spam mail we all fight against.

[LaStrega]

5. I use assorted programs ...

Ad-Aware

Spybot Search & Destroy

Assorted Windows programs, and Norton.

[johnnypneumatic]

7. I've noticed this on some sites, even here on occasion

for example, at Huffington, when I click on a page it calls doubleclick.net and tracks you, before it sends you to the page link you clicked on. I see this because I have that site and many others blocked in my computer's "hosts" file, so that instead of connection to doubleclick, it directs it to 127.0.0.1 (your own computer localhost)
The only problem is, if you hit the back key, it won't go back unless you click it 3 times or more, to get back to the original page you were on...
A few pages here do that, if you are not logged on, it calls the advertisements. Although not often, and it is probably the advertisers doing it, not DU.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

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[many a good man]

10. Harmless web bugs also common in emails

Emails you receive from both non-profit and for profit organizations often contain a little bug that tells the sender whether you've opened the email and which embedded links you clicked on. If the link takes you to another site, that site can tell which organization sent you there. It tells them the effectiveness of their email campaign and the value of their partnerships.

It's pretty harmless, but a little devious because they never tell you this.