Mozilla’s recent announcement to block all third-party cookies by default in the new version of Firefox has sparked renewed interest in these topics, and as you would expect, opinions vary wildly depending on perspective and priorities. Reactions from those representing the ad industry predominantly have been critical, while many privacy advocates have applauded the decision. My reaction was one of frustration for several reasons, but one in particular that is relevant to this discussion — my company builds and sells a product that is used by advertisers and ad agencies to “track” what is happening online.

Common Theme, Different Issues

To adequately discuss privacy, you must first define what it is you’re discussing. Currently, there are two major movements being debated, both of which involve the way Web browsers and providers of online content (predominantly publishers and advertisers) exchange and store information.

First, the Do Not Track (DNT) HTTP header was designed in conjunction with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is intended to provide consumers with a standard way to indicate to Web applications, digital advertisers and publishers they do not wish to have their behavior tracked across Web properties. All major browsers currently support this feature and the industry is moving toward adopting it as a standard; however, last year Microsoft announced that beginning with Internet Explorer 10, it would enable DNT by default, subsequently causing widespread confusion since the header was designed to be opt-in, not opt-out. For this reason, the vast majority of publishers and advertisers currently ignore all stated DNT preferences, including Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

Mozilla’s recent announcement involves a separate debate about whether or not browsers will accept third-party cookies. For the uninitiated, cookies are small files that include data that allow your computer to interact with the websites you visit. Third-party cookies traditionally are set by advertising companies and analytics firms, such as mine, to help understand what is happening on a website over a certain period of time. Prior to Mozilla’s announcement, only Safari blocked third-party cookies by default among the major browser providers. However, Mozilla’s market share (approximately 20 percent according to Net Applications) is much larger than Safari’s and represents “critical mass,” thus the renewed interest in this topic.

Why We Track

Companies track information online for different reasons. In the analytics world, our business is one of scale. Unlike behavioral targeting, our business model is predicated on the ability to identify correlation across millions of advertising “events” and making recommendations based on huge data sets across large-scale media campaigns.

Typically, advertisers purchase huge inventories of ads across a large number of sites their desired audiences frequent. Each of these ads has a different price associated with it, which increasingly is determined by demand and effectiveness. To make sure they get what they pay for, advertisers often choose to work with an analytics firm to better understand which ad campaigns and channels (search, display, etc.) are more effective and why. As a simple example, browser cookies allow us to determine which advertising is resonating with consumers and how many times that message should be displayed before it gets annoying and loses effectiveness, allowing advertisers to avoid waste and poor experiences.

Unintended Consequences

By most estimates, the first online ad appeared roughly 20 years ago. As a technology, cookies have been used for almost as long. They also serve as a fundamental component that underpins the economics of the open web. Small and upcoming publishers rely on the data provided through third-party advertising technologies to quantify and price the “real estate” accompanying their content, often selling ad inventory as part of large-scale networks that provide reach and attract larger advertising customers. Without these networks, it’s difficult to see these publishers attracting ad revenue necessary to compete and offer high-quality, ad-supported content. Paywalls will also become more prevalent for those publishers that have sufficient resources and audiences to support them.

Also, by eliminating the ability for publishers/advertisers to price and purchase higher-quality placements based on relevance, you can expect a return to “spray and pray” tactics where ad inventory prices plummet and the total number of ads displayed and purchased rises drastically. In other words, if you think some ads are disruptive today, get ready to see much more aggressive tactics employed.

Lastly, while cookies are a relatively mature technology with existing browser controls, industry opt-outs and comprehensive privacy policies, there are alternate tracking approaches that don’t have the same level of consumer control. These alternate methods — including device fingerprinting, flash cookies, local storage, etc. — represent the Wild West of tracking technologies. They are very difficult to detect, lack proper controls and can be abused by fringe tracking companies. None of them represent progress or improvement for the customer.

Choice

The advertising community takes privacy seriously and we agree with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), National Advertising Initiative, Digital Advertising Alliance and other organizations advocating for the continued development of existing consumer-choice mechanisms. We welcome participation from Mozilla and other browser vendors that seek to deliver easy and transparent privacy solutions to consumers; however, these need to be developed in concert with both advertisers and publishers to be effective.

Paul Pellman is the CEO of Adometry, Inc., a marketing analytics provider that generates insights about the performance of marketing campaigns through combining and interpreting advertising data from online and offline channels. Prior to joining Adometry, he was executive vice president of marketing for Hoover’s.

What if we could actually put a price on our personal data and use it as currency? That’s what a New York City-based start-up called Enliken is trying to do.

But Enliken’s problem is that it needs a critical mass of publishers, users and advertisers to all buy into this system. And even if done well, the idea of explicitly trading data for money is one that many people will find deeply creepy.

Today, Enliken is introducing the tools for publishers to provide a new kind of paywall, where users can opt to share their data instead of paying money to see premium content. It’s called the DataWall.

The seed-funded Enliken doesn’t have any publisher partners yet for the DataWall, but the company has decided that going to publishers directly is a better approach than what it used to do: Get users to download software that tracked themselves, sell that data on their behalf, and help them donate the proceeds to charity. That product is being shut down in support of the new DataWall.

Who will use the DataWall? “We’re talking to ten big media companies, but nobody whose name I can give,” said Enliken CEO Marc Guldimann. “We just haven’t been able to pin somebody down.”

After publishers, Guldimann wants to talk to retailers about giving discounts to people who agree to be tracked.

Here’s how the DataWall would work: Users show up at a Web site and are asked to either pay money or pay with data. If they elect to pay with data, they agree to be passively tracked for a period of time. Then they proceed past the paywall.

Enliken promises that it will never track personally identifiable information or sensitive topics like medication purchases. What it will do is track opted-in users’ activity across the Web, with a special filter to find interactions with certain brands.

Then Enliken aggregates the data and reports back to publishers: For instance, the sites most visited by their readers, or their most popular brands. That real-time opt-in data will be much higher quality than the stuff you’d normally find on data exchanges, said Guldimann.

But what Enliken is doing requires sophisticated and savvy users who are willing to take a risk. It’s the opposite of the hotly contested “Do Not Track” policies, where users and their browsers would reject any and all data sharing.

“We think as the market gets better educated, people are going to be sticking their hand out saying ‘What’s my share?’” Guldimann said.

His note went to the dealership—but it also went, without his knowledge, to a company that tracks car shoppers online. In a flash, an analysis of the auto websites Mr. Morar had anonymously visited could be paired with his real name and studied by his local car dealer.

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However, the appointment of Mr. Swire, who served as chief counselor for privacy in the Clinton Administration, is unlikely to result in a do-not-track deal by the end of this year, as previously promised.

Earlier this year, a coalition of Internet giants agreed to support a do-not-track button that would let Web users block tracking with a single privacy setting in their Web browser. Currently, Web users who want to turn off tracking must install tracking files from more than 100 companies, alerting those companies that they do not want to be tracked.

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In a post today on its policy blog, Yahoo took aim at Microsoft’s controversial “Do Not Track” default in its Internet Explorer 10 browser.

Said Yahoo in a post titled “In Support of Personal Experience”:

“Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users’ direction. In our view, this degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them. It basically means that the DNT signal from IE10 doesn’t express user intent.”

Thus, Yahoo “will not recognize IE10’s default DNT signal on Yahoo! properties at this time.”

Such a move should make Yahoo very popular with advertisers, most of which are publicly and privately decrying the Microsoft effort for their browser having advertising targeting and tracking turned off by default.

In fact, Yahoo’s statement of no-default-respect pretty much tracks on what the Digital Advertising Alliance, which represents thousands of major marketers, said recently, as well as the Association of National Advertisers.

Both those groups and many others are seeking to kill DNT.

According to sources, the impetus for the Yahoo decision was CEO Marissa Mayer, a former Google exec.

Interestingly, Google recently added DNT support to the latest version of its increasingly popular Chrome browser developer build.

And the third major browser, Mozilla’s Firefox, also offers a DNT product as a key feature.

Right now, Mayer is in discussions with the software giant about improving the weak results of its search advertising partnership, too. This should make those talks much more interesting.

In fact, in a longer privacy post today, titled “Privacy and Technology in Balance,” Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith noted:

“Just because the signal is turned on doesn’t mean that a consumer wants no services that involve tracking. It means instead that consumers are empowered to make their own choices, including selecting services that involve tracking from advertisers and ad networks they trust.”

Here’s the whole post, and here is a really good New York Times piece on the controversy, including talks taking place via an international group working on global DNT standards, called the World Wide Web Consortium:

In Support of a Personalized User Experience

Friday, October 26th, 2012

At Yahoo!, we aspire to make the world’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining. Our users have come to expect a personalized Yahoo! experience tailor-made for their lives — whether they’re checking local weather, sports scores, stock quotes, daily news, or viewing ads on our site. We fundamentally believe that the online experience is better when it is personalized.

That said, we also believe that there should be an easy and transparent way for users to express their privacy preferences to Yahoo!. That’s why we offer our own tools and resources such as Ad Interest Manager, to give users more control over personalized advertising on Yahoo!, and why we participate in industry-wide programs such as AdChoices, which allows users to learn why they’ve been shown an ad.

Yahoo! has been working with our partners in the Internet industry to come up with a standard that allows users to opt out of certain website analytics and ad targeting. In principle, we support “Do Not Track” (DNT). Unfortunately, because discussions have not yet resulted in a final standard for how to implement DNT, the current DNT signal can easily be abused. Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users’ direction. In our view, this degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them. It basically means that the DNT signal from IE10 doesn’t express user intent.

Ultimately, we believe that DNT must map to user intent — not to the intent of one browser creator, plug-in writer, or third-party software service. Therefore, although Yahoo! will continue to offer Ad Interest Manager and other tools, we will not recognize IE10′s default DNT signal on Yahoo! properties at this time.

Yahoo! is committed to working with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to reach a DNT standard that both satisfies user expectations and provides the best Internet experience possible. We will closely evaluate our support for DNT as the industry makes progress in reaching a meaningful, transparent standard to promote choice, reduce signal abuse, and deliver great personalized experiences for our users.

Do Not Track — which aims to help users opt out of being tracked across Web sites for the purposes of targeted advertising — is contentious and still somewhat theoretical. But since Chrome is close to becoming the world’s most-used browser, if it’s not already, its support for DNT is pretty important.

Of all the major browser providers, Google had moved the slowest on Do Not Track, but had earlier this year agreed at the request of the Obama Administration that it would implement DNT.

Google spokesman Rob Shilkin said in an emailed statement, “We undertook to honor an agreement on DNT that the industry reached with the White House early this year. To that end we’re making this setting visible in our Chromium developer channel, so that it will be available in upcoming versions of Chrome by year’s end.”

When Do Not Track is turned on within a browser, a snippet that specifies “DNT:1” is added to the request header whenever a user wants to go to a new Web site. Once Chrome adds this to its full release, that will happen across all major browsers.

But critics say it’s not necessarily clear what sites and advertisers have to do in response to DNT being turned on.

That could be a significant problem, because users will think they’re not being tracked since they explicitly changed a setting (seems like a reasonable assumption!) — but they may just be making a request that can be ignored. Talk about defeating the purpose.

All the Web and advertising players are still sorting out how to deal with this; some, like Google, more reluctantly than others.

For instance, since Microsoft decided to turn on DNT by default in Internet Explorer 10, developers of the Apache Web server are now saying they will ignore Do Not Track requests from IE visitors because it goes against the spirit of DNT being a choice. Also, even though Facebook is doing its own ad exchange, it hasn’t agreed to participate in Do Not Track at all.

Image via Maxthon corporate blog. 

Onstage at D10 Thursday, FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz argued that it is, and that its broad prohibition against “unfair and deceptive acts or practices” gives it a decent enough paddle with which to smack Google, Facebook and other companies that need to be reminded that our personal information is also our property. Also top of mind during today’s interview: Fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) patent-licensing obligations, and whether a Do Not Track policy for third-party cookies is good for business or not.

Below, video highlights from the session:

Full D10 Conference Coverage

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120531/ftc-chairman-jon-leibowitz-on-privacy-do-not-track-facebook-and-google-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120517/twitter-tailors-your-who-to-follow-list-but-only-if-you-want-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20120517/twitter-tailors-your-who-to-follow-list-but-only-if-you-want-it/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 23:18:38 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=209621 Twitter began rolling out tailored suggestions for users to follow on Thursday, aiming to give Twitter newcomers better direction in learning how to navigate the somewhat abstruse microblogging platform. The suggestions stem from a tracking cookie Twitter sends to new users, allowing the company to see sites visited within the past 10 days. Twitter then uses that information to recommend who to follow. Users can also opt out of this service.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120517/twitter-tailors-your-who-to-follow-list-but-only-if-you-want-it/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120517/twitter-enables-do-not-track-feature-on-firefox-browser/ http://allthingsd.com/20120517/twitter-enables-do-not-track-feature-on-firefox-browser/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 16:59:38 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=209409 Twitter users on supported browsers can now opt out of being tracked by third-party sites and cookies by enabling the “Do Not Track” feature, Twitter announced on Thursday. Federal Trade Commission CTO Ed Felton championed the feature at a conference in New York on Thursday morning. Since Mozilla first introduced the feature for its Firefox browser last year, the company claims nearly 10 percent desktop-user adoption of DNT, and almost 20 percent on Firefox for mobile.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120517/twitter-enables-do-not-track-feature-on-firefox-browser/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120326/ftc-calls-for-privacy-by-design/ http://allthingsd.com/20120326/ftc-calls-for-privacy-by-design/#comments Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:09:57 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=190043 The U.S. Federal Trade Commission today released a set of recommendations for businesses and Congress about the collection and use of consumers’ personal data.

This framework (PDF) has been in the works for years, and in the meantime there has been considerable progress on many of its final recommendations, both proactively by businesses themselves and through privacy investigations and settlements the FTC had with companies like Google and Facebook.

Screengrab from the FTC's diagram of the personal data ecosystem

The FTC calls for “privacy by design,” simplified choices and greater transparency.

The report includes indications that the FTC is concerned about comprehensive tracking — the sort of stuff that companies like Google and Facebook are moving toward — though that’s one of the less-developed recommendations. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz had previously called Google’s new unified privacy policy “a fairly binary and somewhat brutal choice” for consumers to make.

The FTC passed the report 3-1, with Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch dissenting for a few reasons, one of which was concern that the FTC is effectively mandating that Internet services will become “opt in” by design, even when that’s impractical or unnecessary. Again, that’s an important one for Google, Facebook and other Internet companies that seek to evolve along with the personal data they collect.

There are five main action items in the framework:

• Do Not Track: This is probably the furthest along. Browser vendors are now offering do-not-track options for consumers to limit data collection, the Digital Advertising Alliance is committed to respecting them, and standards bodies are working to standardize.
• Mobile: The FTC wants to make mobile privacy protections “short, effective and accessible to consumers on small screens.”
• Data Brokers: This is a bigger one. The FTC wants a centralized Web site where data brokers identify themselves and disclose how they collect data. It also supports Congress’s efforts to give consumers access to data about them held by brokers.
• Comprehensive Tracking: The FTC is concerned about ISPs, operating systems, browsers and social networks comprehensively tracking users’ online activities, but it won’t address this until a public workshop in the second half of this year.
• Enforcing Self-Regulatory Codes: The FTC said it will help enforce industry-specific codes of conduct.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120326/ftc-calls-for-privacy-by-design/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120223/web-firms-to-adopt-no-track-button/ http://allthingsd.com/20120223/web-firms-to-adopt-no-track-button/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:00:04 +0000 Julia Angwin http://allthingsd.com/?p=177221 A coalition of Internet giants including Google Inc. has agreed to support a do-not-track button to be embedded in most Web browsers — a move that the industry had been resisting for more than a year.

The reversal is being announced as part of the White House’s call for Congress to pass a “privacy bill of rights,” that will give people greater control over the personal data collected about them.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120223/web-firms-to-adopt-no-track-button/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110322/microsoft%e2%80%99s-advertising-arm-still-weighing-do-not-track/ http://allthingsd.com/20110322/microsoft%e2%80%99s-advertising-arm-still-weighing-do-not-track/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:57:49 +0000 Jennifer Valentino-DeVries http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=37978 The latest version of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer includes a do-not-track tool that broadcasts users’ wishes not to be monitored online–but that doesn’t mean Microsoft’s advertising unit is honoring those requests yet.

“Our view is that that’s an industry discussion,” Erich Andersen, deputy general counsel for Microsoft, told Digits. “We’re trying to take a leadership role in helping users send a signal of their intention. But the key thing is that a definition of ‘tracking’ needs to happen.” Microsoft Advertising serves ads based on users’ browsing behavior as well as on Bing searches and sites like MSN.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110322/microsoft%e2%80%99s-advertising-arm-still-weighing-do-not-track/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110315/microsoft-adds-do-not-track-tool-to-browser/ http://allthingsd.com/20110315/microsoft-adds-do-not-track-tool-to-browser/#comments Tue, 15 Mar 2011 07:00:42 +0000 Nick Wingfield and Julia Angwin http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=37653 A new version of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer to be released Tuesday will be the first major Web browser to include a do-not-track tool that helps people keep their online habits from being monitored.

Microsoft’s decision to include the tool in Internet Explorer 9 means Google Inc. and Apple Inc. are the only big providers of browsers that haven’t yet declared their support for a do-no-track system in their products. In January, Mozilla Corp. said it would include a do-not-track feature in an upcoming version of its Firefox browser. Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser.

The moves by Microsoft and Mozilla reflect an unusually fast adoption of an idea—the do-not-track system—that was first officially proposed by the Federal Trade Commission only three months ago. It highlights the pressure the industry faces to provide people with a way to control how they are tracked and targeted online, as lawmakers and regulators threaten to rein in the practice.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110315/microsoft-adds-do-not-track-tool-to-browser/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110216/online-privacy-can-tinseltown-teach-silicon-valley-the-way/ http://allthingsd.com/20110216/online-privacy-can-tinseltown-teach-silicon-valley-the-way/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:02:48 +0000 Zephrin Lasker http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=36422 If there is one topic trending higher in the press than the latest celebrity breakup, it’s the issue of online privacy. The government is now exploring tighter regulation of the online advertising industry. The FTC recently called for a do-not-track system that would allow consumers to opt out of being monitored online. And now the Department of Commerce has taken up the cause with recommendations for a Privacy Bill of Rights. If all this leads to strong legislation in Congress, it will mean the digital advertising industry could, in certain ways, become more highly regulated than finance and pharmaceutical industries.

If the online industry wants to avoid government restriction, it must regulate itself. This is a good time to explore other attempts at industry self-regulation and its effects. Some self-regulatory efforts have been bureaucratic at best, while others have been completely ineffective. The medical industry’s most recent self-regulatory effort in the name of consumer protection around the HIPAA privacy law, is an example of good intentions spoiled by bureaucratic enforcement. It was actually reported in the New York Times that birthday parties in nursing homes in some states have been canceled for fear that revealing a resident’s date of birth could be a violation of the HIPAA law.

Other industry self-regulation attempts, like the Tobacco Industry’s “We Card” program, have been pointless. The program did little, if anything, to curb tobacco sales. When looking for a self-regulatory success story, the online industry should follow the example of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

Looking back at the history of Hollywood, there are similarities between the online ad industry today and the censorship of the film industry in the 1930s. In response to the threat of government intervention in 1930, the movie industry created a regulatory system around a “code of conduct” known as the Hays Code. The code was a set of restrictions on the content filmmakers could produce. The Hays Code was written with conservative and religious principles in mind, with restrictive clauses such as, “the clergy cannot be portrayed as comic characters or villains.” When the Hays Code came under scrutiny in the late 1960s for its strict rules and infringement on free speech, the industry ultimately dismantled it and created our current rating system.

A voluntary “code of conduct” is exactly what the Department of Commerce Internet Privacy Task Force is asking the online industry to create, and what industry trade groups are also espousing. What is most applicable to the online industry is the fact that the self-regulatory system the MPAA created and still uses today puts the user in charge of deciding what they are going to see.

The user-in-charge system is a concept that Apple’s Steve Jobs relates to. When asked to weigh in on the privacy issue at the recent D8 conference, he said, “Privacy means people know what they are signing up for in plain English. Some people want to share more data. Ask them. Ask them every time. Let them know precisely what you are going to do with their data.”

With the online world becoming more social than ever, user data is central to advertisers. Online marketers are no longer content with abstract metrics like clicks or impressions. They want to find out about individuals to give them a personalized experience. However, if advertisers want access to consumer data it should be done in a privacy-compliant way. This means the online ad the industry must develop clearer privacy practices and give users the ability to opt in to receive ads.

And as a start, users must be shown a clear way to opt out. For this reason, the issue of online privacy can’t be relegated to the legal team. The issue should be resolved by people who can design a user interface that is elegant, simple and crystal clear. The design and user interface teams must be involved at every step in the process so as to provide users with clear and transparent mechanisms to help them understand what data will be collected, what will be done with the data and how they can opt out of data sharing altogether.

If the industry wants to self-regulate to avoid being federally regulated, it should start by designing a clear, opt-in system that puts the user in charge. Let’s not wait for a giant carrot or a big stick. Self-regulation has worked before–there’s no reason it can’t happen now.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110216/online-privacy-can-tinseltown-teach-silicon-valley-the-way/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110211/lawmaker-introduces-new-privacy-bill/ http://allthingsd.com/20110211/lawmaker-introduces-new-privacy-bill/#comments Fri, 11 Feb 2011 23:19:07 +0000 Julia Angwin, Scott Thurm and Michael Hickins http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=36288 Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., introduced a bill Friday that would give the Federal Trade Commission authority to establish an online do-not-track system.

The bill is the first in this session to specifically tackle the creation of a do-not-track system, according to a spokesman for Ms. Speier. In December, the FTC issued a report recommending the creation of a do-not-track system and suggested that lawmakers use the report as a template for legislation.

Since the FTCs recommendation, Mozilla Corp. has said it will include a do-not-track feature in an upcoming version of its Firefox Web browser. But so far, no tracking companies have publicly stated that they will participate in a do-not-track system.

In its newest Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft will allow users to stop certain websites and tracking companies from monitoring them. And Google last month began offering a tool that lets users of its Chrome browser permanently opt out of ad-tracking cookies.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110211/lawmaker-introduces-new-privacy-bill/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110124/web-tool-on-firefox-to-deter-tracking/ http://allthingsd.com/20110124/web-tool-on-firefox-to-deter-tracking/#comments Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:00:36 +0000 Julia Angwin http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=35486 Mozilla Corp. plans to add a do-not-track feature to its Firefox Web browser, which could let users avoid having their actions monitored online.

The announcement makes Firefox the first Web browser to heed the Federal Trade Commission’s call for the development of a do-not-track system. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Mozilla was exploring the development of such a system.

For Firefox’s tool to work, however, tracking companies would need to agree to not monitor users who enable the do-not-track feature. So far, no companies have publicly agreed to participate in the system, but Mozilla urged them to join in.

“Mozilla recognizes the chicken and egg problem,” the company’s newly appointed global privacy and public-policy leader, Alexander Fowler, wrote in a blog post. But, he wrote, Mozilla is asking that websites and advertisers join its efforts to “honor people’s privacy choices.”

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110124/web-tool-on-firefox-to-deter-tracking/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101212/what-privacy-problem-web-ad-targeter-media6degrees-raises-17-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20101212/what-privacy-problem-web-ad-targeter-media6degrees-raises-17-million/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:00:45 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=26951 One way to gauge what’s really going on with privacy and Web advertising: Follow the money. If investors really think privacy problems are going to weigh the industry down, it’s going to be a lot harder to get checks out of them.

So use that context to think about this news: Media6Degrees, a behavioral advertising technology start-up, has raised a $17 million funding round led by Menlo Ventures.

Earlier investors U.S. Venture Partners and Venrock, which had helped the 2-year-old company raise another $12 million before the new B round, are re-upping.

The money is targeted for general expansion, not M&A, says CEO Tom Phillips, who joined the company in 2009 after a three-year stint at Google.

Phillips says his company will end up booking $20 million in revenue in 2010. And he says that by Q4 it had ramped up to a $30 million annual run rate–that is, it will do about $7.5 million in the last three months of the year.

Media6 describes what it does as “Social Targeting,” which sounds as if it’s trying to find links between your various social networks. But the company’s work has nothing to do with your Facebook or Twitter profiles. While it doesn’t like the term “behavioral targeting,” that’s essentially what it’s doing.

In a nutshell, Media6 Web marketers track the surfing behavior of their existing customers, then try to find similar behavior patterns–a matching “social signature”–for other surfers, so they can show them ads.

Depending on your perspective, that’s either creepy or a common-sense strategy to help advertisers spend their money more efficiently. If it does weird you out, you can go ahead and opt out. But Phillips and his company would like you to know that the company never tracks individuals–only their anonymized browsers.

Still don’t want any part of this stuff? In theory, companies like Media6 will be in trouble if lots of surfers really do start opting out of data collection. They can do that by telling individual Web sites and ad networks not to track them–or, more ominously, by using browsers with “do not track” filters built into them.

But we’re a very long way from that kind of change. And the start-up’s investors seem to be betting that it’s never going to come.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101212/what-privacy-problem-web-ad-targeter-media6degrees-raises-17-million/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101203/house-committee-asks-professor-to-censor-facebook-remarks/ http://allthingsd.com/20101203/house-committee-asks-professor-to-censor-facebook-remarks/#comments Fri, 03 Dec 2010 08:00:07 +0000 Jennifer Valentino-DeVries http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=33492 In an unusual move, the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection asked a Columbia University Law School professor to censor his remarks in a hearing about online privacy legislation.

“We as members of Congress are never inclined to censor testimony in open congressional hearings,” Rep. Zachary Space, an Ohio Democrat, said when introducing the professor, Eben Moglen. “But Congress tries to foster highest level of decorum. I would ask you to avoid personal attacks against any companies or company employees.”

The hearing focused on the possibility of legislation requiring data companies and Web browser makers to provide a “do not track” tool allowing people to opt out of having their Web surfing tracked.

In written remarks submitted before the hearing, Mr. Moglen did not mention “do not track” but talked generally about online privacy. He criticized Facebook Inc. extensively, describing the social networking site’s privacy settings as “mere deception.” Facebook “has uncontrolled access to everybody’s data, regardless of the so-called ‘privacy settings,’” he wrote.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101203/house-committee-asks-professor-to-censor-facebook-remarks/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101202/proposed-law-would-prohibit-web-collection-of-data-on-kids/ http://allthingsd.com/20101202/proposed-law-would-prohibit-web-collection-of-data-on-kids/#comments Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:34:25 +0000 Steve Stecklow http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=33399 Legislation set to be introduced early next year would prohibit companies from tracking children on the Internet without parental consent.
Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat, plans to propose legislation that, if passed, would go well beyond current federal law that requires websites aimed at children under 13 to obtain parental permission before collecting personal information such as kids’ names or email addresses.

“For many kids today, the Internet is like online oxygen,” says Rep. Markey. “To ensure that kids are protected, I plan to introduce legislation next year that will include a ‘Do Not Track’ requirement so that kids do not have their online behavior tracked or their personal information collected or profiled. I look forward to working with my colleagues to move this legislation forward.”

The plan by Mr. Markey is part of a swirl of recent activity on the Internet privacy front. He is expected to discuss his proposal at a House hearing Thursday on the feasibility of establishing a simple way for consumers to prevent data companies from monitoring their online activities. On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission called for the development of a do-not-track system.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101202/proposed-law-would-prohibit-web-collection-of-data-on-kids/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101201/ftc-backs-do-not-track-system-for-web/ http://allthingsd.com/20101201/ftc-backs-do-not-track-system-for-web/#comments Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:40:24 +0000 Julia Angwin and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=33333 The Federal Trade Commission unveiled a report on Internet privacy Wednesday that calls for the development of a do-not-track system that would enable people to avoid having their actions monitored online, a move the online-advertising industry has opposed.

“Industry must do better,” the FTC staff report states. “Many companies–both online and offline–do not adequately address consumer privacy interests.”

David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection, said in a speech Wednesday at the National Press Club that it is too hard for people to avoid being tracked online, particularly as tracking companies are constantly developing new methods.

“We will not tolerate a technological arms race that aims to subvert consumer choice,” Mr. Vladeck said. “We have to simplify consumer choice, and a do-not-track option can achieve that goal.”

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101201/ftc-backs-do-not-track-system-for-web/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101130/hiding-online-footprints/ http://allthingsd.com/20101130/hiding-online-footprints/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 08:00:38 +0000 Julia Angwin and Spencer E. Ante http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=33249 The makers of the popular Firefox Web browser are exploring ways to create a do-not-track mechanism that could offer Internet users a way to avoid being monitored online.

The effort comes just months after Firefox’s creator, Mozilla Corp., killed a powerful and new tool to limit tracking under pressure from an ad-industry executive, The Wall Street Journal has learned. Mozilla says it didn’t scrap the tool because of pressure, but rather out of concern it would force advertisers to use even sneakier techniques and could slow down the performance of some websites.

Meanwhile, online advertising company Lotame Solutions Inc. is also supporting efforts for an industry-created do-not-track mechanism. Lotame’s powerful tracking technologies were featured in a front-page article in the Journal earlier this year.

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