It becomes very annoying when you see 'embarrassing' ads everywhere... You know what I mean...

Which means they already had this system internally. Which also means the governments can have access to this data. Which basically means that privacy no longer exists.

I guess Google wouldn't have needed to buy DoubleClick if they weren't planning on doing this kind of evil.

The FAQ link on their opt-out plugin page appears to be broken:
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/plugin

The FAQs link points to:

http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/pluginfaq.html

So... Behavioral Targeting...

Finally no ads for me? :D I never clicked...

If we never accept doubleclick.net cookies, will that block the behavioral tracking? Or is the tracking done through google.com cookies?

For people who a) don't always use Firefox and b) sometimes delete their cookies, there ought to be an easier way.

>> For people who a) don't always use Firefox and b) sometimes delete their cookies, there ought to be an easier way.

You can opt-out here: http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html

OR Google says:

"To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn't deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice."

Install opt-out Plug-in here: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/plugin

I can see an advantage for the content provider. If I, as a website owner, put AdSense on say my FAQ or Acknowledgements page the ads currently aren't particularly useful because there's no good context for targeting. This change would increase the chance that the ads on those pages would be relevant to the viewer.

DiGi wrote:
> Behavioral Targeting ... :D I never clicked...

I guess that's the next step. Google could show whatever kind of ads the viewer has previously clicked on.

The "Interests" are only extracted from the doubleclick.net domain – the URL http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ redirects over to http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/ads/preferences/getcookie?sig=<somevalue> which in return redirects to the actual http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/view?sig=<somevalue> that has opt-out and set preferences.

The preferences are similarly only set as cookies in the doubleclick.net domain.

Finally, the opt-out is only set in the doubleclick.net domain.

This would mean that the profiles and targeting would not be accessible on the google-syndication.com domain used by adSense.

This is, at least, as far as I can see. Anyone see any different?

Oh, and look at that – the googlesyndication.com script is now loading content from googleads.g.doubleclick.net. That's the bit that I was missing.

Surly:
mrbene:
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/plugin/browsers.html#chrome

Only doubleclick cookies.

I don't like this.

Adbusters has started a campaign to automatically click AdSense ads.
They seem to think this might cause Google to adopt a pro-privacy policy.

http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot_blog/unclick_google.html

Greasemonkey script to click all AdSense ads:
http://www.micahmwhite.com/blackspot_google.user.js

Greasemonkey script to click random AdSense ads:
http://www.micahmwhite.com/blackspot_google_randomly.user.js

Wouldn't it make more sense to make a cookie pool and have a script that changes your ID?

I just got this email:

<<<Hi,

We're writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make any necessary changes to your site's privacy policies. You'll also see some new options on your Account Settings page.

Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user's previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. "sports enthusiast"). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the "sports enthusiast" interest category. To learn more about your associated account settings, please visit the AdSense Help Center at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=20310.

As a result of this announcement, your privacy policy will now need to reflect the use of interest-based advertising. Please review the information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=100557 to ensure that your site's privacy policies are up-to-date, and make any necessary changes by April 8, 2009. Because publisher sites and laws vary across countries, we're unfortunately unable to suggest specific privacy policy language.

For more information about interest-based advertising, you can also visit the Inside AdSense Blog at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/03/driving-monetization-with-ads-that.html.

We appreciate your participation and look forward to this upcoming enhancement.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your AdSense product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043>>>

Ironically, Gmail stuck that email in my Spam filter.

For those who want to opt out across all of the big ad networks, there's a wizard now:

[www.privacychoice.org]

Plug-in coming soon ...