Think Behavioral Ad Targeting Isn't Personal? Think Again

Many consumers are worried about behavioral ad targeting -- the process that enables advertisers to show you ads for products or services they think you're interested in.

Lots of people find this creepy and invasive.  The usual answer from the advertising industry is a basic tsk-tsk.  Oh but none of that information is personal, say the advertisers.  We don't know you by name, just by your habits.

Not so, says Stanford University computer scientist Jonathan Mayer, who released a study today finding that websites are widely sharing your log-in name and personal information (like your first and last name and birthday).

For example when you view a local ad on the Home Depot website, your first name and email address are sent to 13 additional companies, Mayer said. The site okcupid.com packages your gender, zip code and date of birth especially for advertisers. Advertisers then routinely combine this information into profiles on individual consumers.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) finds this worrisome.  

"This personal information is almost completely unregulated which raises some fundamental privacy questions," said Christopher Calabrese in an ACLU web posting. "Should anyone have the right to know and sell to others the fact that you are overweight, or depressed, or gay?"

Data aggregators

Jonathan Mayer

Advertisers also sell this information to third parties, called data aggregators, who in turn sell it to other marketers, employers and, perhaps most chillingly, the government.

The ACLU says that as far back as 2001, data aggregation companies have had contracts with the federal government and states to collect and share personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted cell phone numbers, insurance claims, driver's license photographs, and credit reports. 

"Perhaps most worrying of all is the larger system that's being created. Behavioral targeting creates an economic incentive for tracking — better and better surveillance is rewarded with more and more ad revenue," Calabrese said. "Of course we have long been concerned with big brother spying on us but what if the danger is here is that lots of "little brothers" all with their own economic reasons for spying. The way the system is built right now, the government can just come along for the ride."

Mayer's study was released in conjunction with a panel discussion today at the National Press Club in Washington.

Also appearing was Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chairman Jon Leibowitz, who reviewed the FTC's study of online privacy, which is turning into a hot issue on Capitol Hill, as privacy advocates press for measures that would let consumers opt out of being tracked online. 

The FTC has warned browser manufacturers that if they don't develop voluntary methods to accomplish that goal, new federal regulations may be the result.