Michael Zimmer, PhD, is a digital privacy and data ethics scholar at Marquette University
A few months ago Mozilla released Firefox 4, which featured an important "Do Not Track" function which informs websites and advertisers whether you wish to have your activity monitored and collected for behavioral targeting purposes. The problem, however, was that…
Read More Firefox 5 Adds Cross-Platform “Do Not Track”, and Puts it in Privacy Tab
Mozilla has released Firefox version 4, featuring a new look and feel (Chrome, anyone?), and new privacy and security features. The feature with the most potential -- and the most buzz -- is “Do Not Track,” which "lets you tell…
Helen Nissenbaum and others on the PORTIA and PRESIDIO projects have released a white paper describing Privads, a client-side behavioral advertising system designed to protect users' privacy: Online behavioral advertising (OBA) refers to the practice of tracking users across web…
Today, Google announced its long-awaited behavioral targeted advertising program. Building from its acquisition of DoubleClick, Google's new ad system -- which it refers to as "interest-based advertising" -- will use cookies to track users across the multitude of sites that…
There's been a flurry of activity in recent weeks related to the privacy concerns of online behavioral advertising. Earlier this month, TRUSTe released a whitepaper designed to help online businesses assess and better understand their own privacy practices related to…
Read More Recent Activities in the Online Behavioral Advertising Privacy Sphere
Yahoo has issued a press release on their new ad sales system, AMP! that provided a few new insights into this "powerful new online advertising platform." The New York Times broke this story earlier, which I blogged about here. Interestingly,…
The New York Times is reporting details of Yahoo's forthcoming new advertising system which will allow targeting of ads based on users' online activities: Yahoo said the system, called AMP and still months away from being ready, would greatly simplify…
Read More Yahoo’s New Ad Sales System to Include Behavioral Targeting
On the heels of growing public awareness of how "large Web companies are learning more about people than ever from what they search for and do on the Internet, gathering clues about the tastes and preferences of a typical user…
Read More Proposed NY Law to Limit the Web Tracking also Requires Access to Data Collected
On the heels of clearing the way for the Google-DoubleClick deal, and resulting from a recent meeting on behavioral advertising, the FTC today released a statement for comment on behavioral advertising: "Possible Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising" (PDF). In…
Read More FTC Proposes Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
Following recent announcements by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook, MySpace has announced it will begin targeting advertisements based on users profiles and behavior on their social networking platform. As explained in this NYTimes article: The algorithms make their judgments partly…
Read More Panoptic Sorting on the Rise as MySpace Enters Behavioral Targeting Foray
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