Archive | Tag: legislation

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A group of ten consumer groups on Tuesday called on Congress to enact
meaningful privacy legislation, and slammed industry efforts as totally
inadequate. The groups are most concerned about behavioral tracking, a technique
used by Internet companies to serve up more targeted ads or results
based on your Web
browsing activities. Are you searching for information on Paris? You
might see ads on the right-hand bar for travel deals or hotels, or
links to blog posts about the French city.

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Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft employ behavioral
targeting, in which cookies collect information on users’ Web browsing
habits, to better tailor online ad campaigns for Web surfing consumers.
This practice doesn’t sit well with consumer and privacy advocates,
which urged Congress to crack down on behavioral targeting and asked
the Federal Trade Commission to set up a registry to help users opt out
of such practices.

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Ten consumer and privacy groups are urging Congress to
limit the way online information can be used for advertising and
profiling.

A coalition of ten consumer and privacy groups on Tuesday urged Congress to draft new legislation
to preserve consumer privacy online by limiting behavioral advertising
and establishing new ground rules for information collection and use.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Privacy advocates are gearing up to push for broad electronic privacy legislation this fall, hoping to convince lawmakers that businesses’ self-regulation techniques are inadequate. The groups also say Internet companies’ efforts don’t go far enough.
"Self regulation does not work. We’ve seen it in capital markets. We’ve
seen it online," said Consumer Watchdog’s John Simpson.

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A powerful alliance of privacy and consumer groups
have likened behavioral advertising to "being followed by an invisible
stalker."

"An individual’s data belongs to them and before these companies
track you all over the internet, they need to be transparent about what
they are doing and how they intend to use that information," said John
M. Simpson, consumer advocate with Consumer Watchdog. 

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The Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog and several other advocates are hosting a conference call Sept. 1 to make recommendations about how Congress may better regulate behavioral targeting. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all use behavioral targeting to better serve ads to Web surfers. The groups want to be heard by Congress, which is working on legislature to better protect consumer privacy online.

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Consumer groups want rules requiring a standard disclosure and
opt-in form, a ban on tracking information on a consumer’s health,
sexual orientation and financial condition and a "do-not-track"
registry that would enable people to declare they don’t want to be
tracked, according to a written statement from the Consumer Federation
of America. That group, the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer
Watchdog and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse have agreed on the
principles and are urging policymakers to adopt them. Allowing industry
to self-regulate won’t work, they say, because most companies rely on
"opt-out" mechanisms that are hidden from consumers. And the FTC’s
principles for behavioral advertising "don’t provide a basis for action
to stop abuses," the statement said.

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The Department of Justice has opened an inquiry into the settlement,
according to three people who have spoken with investigators. Such
inquiries don’t necessarily turn into formal investigations, though
some advocates are pressing the government to get involved. "We’d like to have them intervene and delay the settlement until the
antitrust issues get fixed," said John M. Simpson of Consumer Watchdog, a
nonprofit group that contacted the Justice Department about the
settlement a month ago.

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