• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, February 12, 2009

The Federal Trade Commission this morning issued new guidelines proposing that companies using behavioral targeting provide "clear, concise, consumer-friendly and prominent" notice of the practice and allow consumers to opt out.

That's among the recommendations in the long-awaited 55-page report. The FTC also called for companies to provide "reasonable security" for consumer data, seek express consent before using consumer data differently than it originally promised, and seek refrain from collecting "sensitive" data without users' explicit consent.

The FTC defines behavioral advertising as "the tracking of a consumer's online activities over time." The agency said the principles were intended to apply when companies target people based on their prior searches, but not when they serve ads to people based on a single visit to a site or a single search query. The guidelines also don't apply to sites that don't share consumer information with third parties.