Last year, Pace University computer science professor Cathy Dwyer reported that a visit to Levis.com
resulted
in at least nine separate companies dropping Web beacons on her computer. At the time, not one of those companies was mentioned in Levis.com's privacy policy.
Now, The Wall Street
Journal has repeated Dwyer's research on a larger scale. The newspaper looked at the top 50 U.S. Web sites and found that, on average, they dropped 64 pieces of tracking technology -- like
cookies or beacons -- onto users' computers.
This technology is used to trail users across the Web and create marketing profiles of them based on sites visited. Marketers can then send
targeted Web ads to users who are thought to be interested in buying particular goods.
As the article points out, the profiles are "anonymous" in that companies don't know Web users' names or
addresses. But one problem is that it's possible to figure out people's identities from anonymous information, provided the information is sufficiently detailed.
The paper's report, which went
live over the weekend, already is riling the industry, leaving online ad industry executives scrambling to reassure the public that they provide clear notice, allow users to opt out of ad targeting
and don't collect users' names.
But many publishers omit far more information than they provide when discussing behavioral targeting. Critically, although some publishers acknowledge that they
use ad networks, many publishers don't name those networks, but instead simply provide links to the Network Advertising Initiative -- which doesn't give users specific information about which networks
are amassing information from which publishers.
Publishers' reasons might be understandable -- some appear to be worried that marketers will go directly to the intermediaries -- but the
result is privacy polices that are less than transparent about online advertising. Yes, tech-savvy users can download plug-ins that will let people know which companies are installing code on their
computers. But publishers shouldn't make users jump through those kinds of hoops to learn the names of companies that might be using targeting technology.
For the online ad industry, this
article comes at an inopportune moment. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) have drafted privacy legislation, the Senate held a hearing last week, and the Federal Trade Commission is
preparing to release a report this fall.
Already some reformers, like Jeff Chester, are planning to leverage the Journal's article. "Privacy advocates will be holding up the front
page of the Wall Street Journal when they lobby the Hill over the next few weeks, as the Rush-Boucher Bill moves forward," says Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital
Democracy.
Meanwhile, some industry executives are calling attention to a piece by media commentator Jeff Jarvis, who takes issue with the Journal's article. But Jarvis is hardly
endorsing current practices. "If I were an advertising-supported site, I'd be aggressively transparent," he writes. "I'd tell you
exactly what we track and what impact that has on what we serve in advertising and content. I'd create an app to read the cookies placed just for you and explain them."
If more publishers had
done so, the online ad industry might not be facing the threat of regulation.