

Ads Follow Web Users, and Get Much More Personal - quizbiz
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/media/31privacy.html?_r=1&hp

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prodigal_erik
This part of the online ad industry is surprisingly intricate. There are
vendors whose entire business model is arbitrage of behavioral data. They make
deals to drop tracking pixels on big sites, set third-party cookies on those
sites' users, build statistical models about users' actions and interests, and
sell others the right to add still more tracking pixels and set their own
third-party cookies for ad targeting.

Some of them appear on
<http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp>, a self-regulation
effort which has not been well publicized.

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paraschopra
There has been buzz that the US Congress will pass legislation which would
bring transparency to privacy of consumer tracking data. (People say that they
could make all online advertising/tracking systems strictly "Opt-In" only, but
I don't believe they would do it as it would destroy all of online advt.
market). Essentially, this would entail telling visitors that their actions
are being tracked and then giving them a super-easy method to opt out of it.
IAB has also laid out 7 privacy principles:
[http://www.iab.net/insights_research/public_policy/behaviora...](http://www.iab.net/insights_research/public_policy/behavioral-
advertisingprinciples) So, expect a lot of consumer awareness campaigns in
future.

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mahmud
All that would do is move it ISP side towards deep-packet inspection,
something like what Phorm does in the U.K.

