[LINK] Doubleclick and its privacy claims

[Stewart Fist]

Peter Lewis has a reasonably interesting article on DoubleClick in the New
York Times. For some reason he doesn't mention their recent purchase of that
tracking company (who's name I can't think of).

> The sticky part would come if DoubleClick were to link your name routinely 
> with your browsing habits and to provide that information, even indirectly,
> to other companies. That is exactly what it plans to do, but, it says, 
> only with your permission. 
>
> DoubleClick says the cookie information alone allows it to provide 
> targeted advertisements to the computer and to track them so the same
> tedious advertisements do not show up time after time. It does that
> without knowing your name. 
>
> It's the next step that's new. By linking the supposedly anonymous
> online information it gathers through cookies with personal information
> drawn from its vast direct marketing database, DoubleClick says, it will
> be able to focus in on consumers with laserlike precision. DoubleClick
> has not sent out any advertisements based on personal information,
> but it plans to do so by the end of the year. 

<SNIP>

Story: <http://nytimes.com/library/tech/00/02/circuits/articles/24pete.html>

DoubleClick's opt-out site: <http://privacychoices.org/optout.htm>
-- 
Stewart Fist - writer and columnist
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