Opt In Cookies - Proposed Legislation

[Linda Buquet]

A recent joint subcommittee hearing probed behavioral targeting and privacy issues with legislation expected by year's end. One of the options on the table is a possible push to make 3rd party cookies opt in. I hope this option isn't even considered, but if it passed it could severely cripple our industry.

It's good for us to be aware of these things and I had not seen many other blogs discussing it, so I wanted to raise the issue. This is the type of thing that I hope the PMA will get involved with like the IAB and other associations already are. This is primarily about behavioral targeting, which is more the IAB's concern, but if 3rd part cookies are impacted it will affect AM by default.

It's difficult to know what the rules will eventually be, but education and lobbying efforts need to be started. If all 3rd party cookies are lumped together and the distinction isn't made clear that our cookies are not involved in behavioral targeting, this could be bad for the industry. More info below.

<strong><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_28/b4139084408781.htm?chan=magazine+channel_business+views">The Threat of an Online Privacy Bill</a> Business Week</strong>
"Mandating that Web surfers "opt in" to cookies could kill the targeted-ad business."

<strong><a href="http://www.internetnews.com/government/article.php/3825841/House+Leaders+Moving+Closer+to+Privacy+Bill.htm">House Leaders Moving Closer to Privacy Bill</a> InternetNews.com</strong>
"Joint subcommittee hearing continues probe of behavioral targeting, with legislation expected by year's end."

<strong><a href="http://www.revenews.com/barrysilverstein/at-what-price-privacy-part-1-of-2/">At What Price Privacy? Part 1 of 2</a> Revenews

<a href="http://www.adotas.com/2009/07/shrugs-at-apocalyptic-opt-in-advertising-rules/">Ignoring the dangers of opt in advertising</a> Adotas</strong>

 

[fastfish720]

Ewww...not good

 

[djbaxter]

It would be nice if politicians proposing this sort of legislation actually took the time to find out what they were talking about first.

Third party cookies are already opt-in. Every browser has the capability to disallow them and I believe most set the option to disallow by default.

Get past that fact and what harm is done to anyone by having a cookie on their system? It's a text file that resides on your computer and does absolutely nothing unless you revisit the page that placed the cookie there before it expires, in which case it reads display information from the cookie to present the oage to you with ads you haven't seen, etc.

If you're worried about it, go into your browser options and make sure that third party cookies are not enabled - or if you're really paranoid you can disable all cookies. That, of course, will probably mean that you'll lock yourself out of some web pages that require session cookies but it's your choice.

With all of the domestic and international issues facing governments in pretty much every nation of the world these days, you'd think that politicians would stop wasting time and taxpayer dollars on this sort of nonsense and actually do something useful for the salaries they draw from the public purse.

Added: I use IE as my default browser, which certainly has options to disallow all or just third party cookies. I just checked Firefox and Opera which I also keep installed and they also have those options.