Privacy advocates are turning up the heat on ad industry leader, DoubleClick, urging concerned
Internet users to barrage members of the company’s network, and DoubleClick
itself, with e-mail.
The campaign, unveiled this week by The Center
For Democracy and Technology (CDT), is aimed at getting people to tell
member Web sites that they don’t want their personal information pooled
with other data that DoubleClick may have about them.
Complaints about DoubleClick and its privacy practices flared up after the company acquired
Abacus Direct, which possesses
prodigious databases about offline consumer activity. Last week, a
California woman filed suit against the company accusing it of unlawful
invasion of privacy.
The main concern raised by CDT is the correlation of online data — stored
in cookies — with the offline information that Abacus Direct possesses.
What DoubleClick needs, according to privacy advocates, is that “missing
link” — name, address, etc. — gathered online, that it can use to match
the online cookies with the offline consumer data. Now, CDT says, some of
the members of the DoubleClick network have agreed to provide that missing
link, which they collect on site registrations. That’s why the privacy
organization has decided to go after DoubleClick member sites.
The e-mail, which consumers can send from the CDT site, goes out to more
than 50 publishers, including AltaVista, Blue Mountain Arts, Ask Jeeves (ASKJ), TheStreet.com, and WebMD (HLTH).
The form e-mail that CDT has formulated tells these sites, “I understand
that at least 10 Doubleclick members — perhaps you — have decided to
disclose to DoubleClick personally identifying information that individuals
provide you during registration to DoubleClick. . . . If I registered at
your site, I did not give you permission to sell my identity — and
I certainly haven’t consented to have my experience of the Internet
turned into a data collection free-for-all.”
Although the company isn’t publicly commenting about the flap, DoubleClick
has posted a statement about its practices and says it won’t use personally
identifiable information about users unless they specifically opt-in.
“Abacus Online will maintain a database consisting of
personally-identifiable information about those Internet users who have
received notice that their personal information will be used for online
marketing purposes and associated with information about them available
from other sources, and who have been offered the choice not to
receive these tailored messages,” says the notice on DoubleClick’s site.
“The notice and opportunity to choose will appear on those Web sites that
contribute user information to the Abacus Alliance, usually when the user
is given the opportunity to provide personally identifiable information
(e.g., on a user registration page, or on an order form).”
Both the CDT Web site and the DoubleClick privacy policy page give
consumers instructions on how to opt-out of having information stored in
“cookies” used for marketing purposes.
Whatever DoubleClick’s practices, CDT and other privacy advocates have
raised suspicion about the company’s openness and honesty, accusations that
DoubleClick will likely have to refute to regain consumers’ trust.
