Google, DoubleClick, fears
p2pnet.net news:- Not surprisingly, consumers, not to mention consumer privacy advocates, are seriously worried by Google’s proposed $3.1 billion buy of DoubleClick.
“The doubleclick servers are in so many blacklists around the world (AdBlock, proxy-based blocklists, etc.),” says a p2pnet Reader’s Write:
However, they are now likely to be moved into Google domain, making them escape the filters people have set up.
There was already an issue of merger of DoubleClick and Abacus Direct, which would let them combine the citizen data they harvested. http://www.junkbusters.com/doubleclick.html And now add Google and its database to the equation….. you get the result.
Many of you are using Gmail, by the way.
Says another:
How can a company profess to “do no evil” when they just purchased another company known as one of the “scum of the earth”? I’ve been blocking and/or deleting DoubleClick cookies almost as long as there has been a WWW.
“How will the search-advertising powerhouse treat the massive amounts of data it already stores on people’s search histories, once it also has at its disposal a storehouse of data on people’s surfing habits from DoubleClick, the No. 1 digital ad-serving company?” – wonders CNET News, going on:
“Despite assurances from Google, privacy advocates worry that Google’s vision for protecting users’ personal information on the Web hasn’t yet caught up with the breakneck pace of the company’s expansion.
“Specifically, will Google combine the two data systems to map not only what someone searches for, but also which sites they visit, videos they watch and ads they click across the Web in order to better target marketers’ promotions?”
CNET needs to ask?
The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) wants the Federal Trade Commission and European Union to stop the merger.
“It leaves too much personal information about all of us in one company’s hands – Google’s,” the story has Jeff Chester, CDD founder and executive director, saying.
But No Fears, says Google ceo Eric Schmidt, according to CNET. That’s because Do No Evil Google, “recognizes the importance of privacy and making people comfortable with its practices. He speculated that Google could create an opt-in system for consumers or maintain separate data storehouses.”
Oh. OK, then.
“Although DoubleClick’s technology delivers the ads, the company does not collect personal information about Web surfers, nor does it target ads based on personal preferences, according to the company,” says the story. Rather, it says its customers – the publishers and advertisers – own data on consumers.”
But, adds CNET, “DoubleClick doesn’t need to collect personal information in order to target ads, privacy advocates say. With the placement of tracking cookies on individual computers, the company has access to a given computer’s Internet Protocol address, as well as a record of sites it has visited.”
As p2pnet pointed out last weekend:
“The doubleclick.com website may use persistent cookies, Web beacons and information collected in our log files (such as Internet Protocol Address, referring URLs, etc.),” admits the DoubleClick privacy statement.
It also states, “In addition, DoubleClick may serve ads on this and other websites using our own DART ad-serving technology. In doing so, one of our ad servers will place or read a unique ad-serving cookie on your computer and will use non-personal information about your browser and your activity at this site to serve ads on this and other sites. The ad-serving cookie is a persistent cookie.”
A “persistent cookie gets entered by your Web browser into the ‘Cookies’ folder on your computer and remains in this ‘Cookies’ folder after you close your browser,” explains DoubleClick.
A Web beacon is an, “often-transparent graphic image [meaning you can't see it and therefore don't know it's there] usually no larger than 1 pixel x 1 pixel, that is placed on a Web site or in an e-mail that is used to monitor the behavior of the user visiting the Web site or sending the e-mail,” explains Internet.com.
“When the HTML code for the Web beacon points to a site to retrieve the image, at the same time it can pass along information such as the IP address of the computer that retrieved the image, the time the Web beacon was viewed and for how long, the type of browser that retrieved the image and previously set cookie values.”
Says the EEF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Kurt Opsahl, quoted in the story, “The question for DoubleClick is not whether they own the data but whether they store it. They have a storehouse of information that could be later accessed by a third party.”
Also See:
seriously worried – Google buys DoubleClick, April 14, 2007
now a commodity – Is ‘business’ killing music?, February 17, 2004
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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