By Claudia Lynch, Benchmarks Online Editor

Mark is taking a break from his column this month to work on some programming projects. -- Ed.

Taking Back Your Privacy*

There have been a lot of Internet privacy issues reported in the news lately. It turns out that the companies who provide advertising infrastructure to Websites (the banner ads) track you as you move from page to page within a site, and often track your movement from site to site. They also work with sites to cross-reference that information against whatever information you voluntarily share (e.g. for a purchase) and your credit card purchase information.

DoubleClick**, one of the top two banner ad serving companies, recently shelled out $1.7 BILLION to buy Abacus Direct, a direct market research firm that compiles demographic and credit card info: "Abacus Direct, a Division of DoubleClick Inc., is the leading information and research provider to the direct marketing industry, managing the nation's largest proprietary database of consumer catalog buying behavior used for target marketing purposes. The Abacus Alliance, a cooperative membership database, contains records from more than 1,100 merchandise catalogs, with more than 2 billion consumer transactions from virtually all U.S. consumer catalog buying households."

Under mounting public pressure, some of these companies are starting to offer various ways for you to "Opt Out". Opting out means the banner company no longer tracks you, no longer compiles and cross-references your| personal information, and deletes whatever information they already have| from their databases.

Following is a list of pages or E-mail addresses you can use to opt out of each company's monitoring programs. Note: For the opt outs that involve cookies (DoubleClick, Engage, Avenue A, Flycast) you need to run them on every computer from which you access the Web regularly.

• DoubleClick: http://www.privacychoices.org/content_optout.htm

• Engage: http://www.engage.com/privacy/koptout.htm (CMGI's Engage is acquiring AdForce and Flycast.)

• Avenue A: http://www.avenuea.com/info/optout2.asp

• Flycast:: http://www.flycast.com/about_us/index.cfm?sub=pri&content=priv-optout

• 24/7 Media: "Any consumer may request removal of his or her name from 24/7 Media's marketing database by sending e-mail to optout@247media.com. You must provide your name, complete street address, city, state, ZIP code and e-mail address. We will use reasonable efforts to delete this information from our existing files."

• MatchLogic: "Should you decide that you do not wish for MatchLogic to use| your profile for any of the services we provide, simply send an email to unsubscribe@globalunsub.delivere.com with the word 'unsubscribe' in the subject and provide your name and address. We will| process your request and send you a confirmation email."

• BURST! Media: "BURST! openly volunteers its practices of collecting information, its targeting capabilities, and its use of cookies. If you have any questions pertaining to this privacy policy and its contents, please direct your correspondence to contact@burstmedia.com"

• L90: "If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact Customer Service sending an email to customerservice@L90.com"

• Sabela: "For more information, please contact us: Email: info@sabela.com"

Sample Message

Here is a sample of the type of message you can send to companies who want E-mail on this topic. Note you can request to have more than one person included in "opting out."

Subject: Opt Out

 

Please permanently remove all data for the following individuals from all your databases immediately:

<name1>
<addr>
<city>, <state> <zip>
<email addr>


<name2>
<addr>
<city>, <state> <zip>
<email addr>

Thanks!

* Benchmarks Online has addressed the issue of online privacy frequently, most recently in the article "Personal Information Online" (http://www.unt.edu/benchmarks/archives/1999/december99/info.htm). The July 1999 Network Connection article "Keeping yourself safe from the Internet" (http://www.unt.edu/benchmarks/archives/1999/july99/netcom.htm) also provides a thoughtful look at this important topic.

** NewsScan Daily (18 February 2000) reported the following:

MICHIGAN PUTS DOUBLECLICK ON NOTICE

The attorney general of Michigan has filed a "notice of intended action" against DoubleClick, charging the Web advertising firm with "failing to disclose to Internet users that DoubleClick is systematically implanting electronic 'cookies,' or electronic surveillance files, on hard drives of users' computers without their knowledge or consent." In addition, the notice criticizes DoubleClick's recent attempts to combine its tracking data with personal data such as names obtained through its acquisition of Abacus Direct last year. Michigan's filing, which is preliminary to a lawsuit, is the third action taken against DoubleClick this week -- the Federal Trade Commission and the New York attorney general earlier launched separate inquiries into the company's business practices. (Financial Times 18 Feb 2000) http://www.ft.com/