I’m sure this has happened to you at some point in your everyday online life: you’re looking at couches for your living room on, let’s say, the IKEA website. All of a sudden every single website you visit after that for weeks shows you banner ads for couches and furniture. Do you find this disturbing or helpful? It’s called online tracking. Google, or some other ad venue that’s tracking your browsing habits, “sees” that you were looking for couches, and serves you ads that compliment this need.
Because some see it as an invasion of your privacy, this method of targeted advertising has been getting a lot of scrutiny in other countries. In Europe, Google and Facebook are in court, for precisely this reason. Here’s what the European court ruling is about.
Because advertisers can see which way the wind is blowing, they expect the FTC will at some point start targeting this issue in the States, as well. In fact, it already has taken some tentative steps towards this.
This would not go well with these companies, so a large number of online ad companies got together to attempt a self-regulating program, instead of having the government dictate how much they can track you. This website gives you control over which companies can target you, and if you prefer, you can opt-out completely. The program is billed as “the online home of the Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising.” It can be found here.
As of August 5th, half a million consumers have signed in to prevent these marketers from tracking their browsing habits. This program though, doesn’t include Google, AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo, nor does it include opt-outs on the browser-level on Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and others, so it’s not known how effective it will ultimately be.
Does online tracking worry you? Do you like to be served content relevant to your needs?
Let us know in the comments.
Here are some more links on the issue if you want to explore more:
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/08/04/report-scrutinizes-online-tracking-practices/
http://mashable.com/2010/11/03/behavior-tracking-privacy/
(Photo courtesy of andercismo.)
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