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U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog
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November 02, 2007
FTC commissioner Leibowitz makes strong statement on online ads
From Louise Story's New York Times story F.T.C. Member Vows Tighter Controls of Online Ads on yesterday's first day of a 2-day FTC Town Hall on Internet advertising: Jon Leibowitz, the commissioner, said he was concerned about ads being shown to children online and about the tactics advertisers are using to collect data about people. "When you're surfing the Internet, you never know who is peering over your shoulder or how many marketers are watching," he said. Here is the commissioner's full speech: So Private, So Public: Individuals, The Internet & The Paradox Of Behavioral Marketing. At the event, PIRG's Amina Fazlullah and the Center for Digital Democracy's Jeff Chester were featured panelists who explained why we also yesterday filed a supplement to our November 2006 joint complaint to the FTC on Internet privacy and behavioral targeting. As Fazlullah explains in the Times story: Another consumer advocate said that Web sites are asking visitors to provide excessive amounts of information, putting them in uncomfortable situations. Amina Fazlullah, a lawyer at the U. S. Public Interest Research Group, compared shopping online to visiting a used-car dealership. Online advertisers, she said, ask the kinds of questions about people's buying power and interests that they would probably choose not to tell a used car dealer, for instance. "In the brick and mortar world, if you're asked for information, you can say 'no,'" she said. San Jose Mercury News and numerous other outlets have stories.
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at November 2, 2007 06:41 AM
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