According to a survey due to be released this Wednesday, two-thirds of Americans object to advertisers tracking their activities online. The survey was a joint effort between Professors from University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania. They also found that when individuals were informed about the specific methods advertisers use to gather information in order to target ads, the percent of Americans in opposition to such tactics rose to as high as 86%. Download the survey here.
The survey reached 1,000 adult Internet users in America, and questions focused on whether consumers want new laws to protect the way that advertisers track personal “Web-histories.” The majority of users desire more strict punishment of those advertisers that violate their personal privacy, and most believe that it should be illegal for advertisers to store their personal data at all.
If you’re concerned about how being tracked online, you can make sure to “clear cookies” in your web browser on a regular basis or you can use some of the largest advertising networks’ opt-out forms to do so permanently: Google, 24/7 Real Media, Doubleclick, Nielsen, ValueClick
We also suggest checking out the World Privacy Forum’s list of opt-out links, but be sure to consider whether you’d like to continue to receive targeted advertising first: Do you want to make sure advertisers show you the cheapest tickets for your upcoming trip to Hawaii? Or make sure you get ads that show you the latest and greatest gear for your sport-of-choice? Then you might want to leave the cookies alone.
For those of you who would like to dig deeper, check out this August article from Wired on how the next generation of Flash Cookies is making it more difficult for individuals to find out what advertisers are tracking them online.
Additionally, if you want to track and remove your personally identifiable information from the largest people-databases out there, we recommend signing up for The Global Do Not Call List today. We’ll help protect you against online and offline stalking, exposure of your personal data, nosy individuals and fraudsters.
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