Google recently launched behavioral targeted ads for AdSense. This means AdSense displays adverts not only on the context of the webpage, but on the context of your browsing history. The aim is to provide more relevant and efficient adverts, but tracking cookies being used across hundreds of thousands of websites raises obvious privacy issues, as Google can use this information to log website you have been on.
Usually, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is very critical of big corporations who intrude on people’s privacy, but their criticism was not very harsh. Why? Because Google has developed a web browser plug-in that permits users to opt-out of this scheme.
The plug-in is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox and modifications to browser preferences in Chrome and Safari also allow people to opt-out. Google also maintains an ‘Ad Preferences Manager‘ which allows this tracking cookie to be disabled until the next time cookies are wiped.
There are several reasons to disable these cookies. Firstly, you may not entrust Google with your details. Secondly, adverts based on past browsing may be displayed to other users of the computer… not perfect if, for example, you were buying a present for a family member and they are suddenly swarmed with advertisements about it!
Most tracking cookies can be disabled if you modify browser settings. In Firefox, for example, in Preferences>Privacy, you can refuse to ‘accept third party cookies’.
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17 Responses to “Protect your privacy from Google AdSense’s new behavioral ads”
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To speak in Orson Welles therms adsense/The War of the Worlds/Citizen Kane in cooperation with Google/big brother is watching you. I personly say/write nice application and, again, a good find Martin.
Joe not Martin.
What about Opera users?
How does the browsing history cookie described above relate to google search history? http://www.google.com/history
EFF has a bizarre discussion about opt-in opt out cookie clearing. as this post sort-of points out, just don’t accept cookies period and this will not be a problem. If there is a website on which you need to accept cookies add an exception for that website. I guess if you are a gmail user this is more of a problem, but it still seems like people need to put a higher premium on privacy and we also need laws which prevent the sort of tracking google does.
Interestingly they haven’t considered other country laws other than the USA. Most specifically the EU and Australian Privacy laws that state that the selection of OPT-IN and NOT OPT-OUT for these systems is wrongful and not in the interests of the users privacy. ie: To make the user perform multiple steps (if they even know those steps exist) to opt-out is a civil offense and in some cases a criminal offense.
Though this might not bother Google so much, it has a vicarious liability component on the advertisers who use this system and reside in those areas where the law is enacted.
Personally I have a cynical view of a company who has made opt-in mandatory and then to opt out you have to download/enable a plugin onto your system. What else does the plugin do??? ~hmmmmmm~
For Firefox users …you may want to
try this add-on
http://www.customizegoogle.com/
Well as I have stated else ware, Firefox+ad block+no script= no worries! I have not seen an ad in sometime, and do not plan on allowing any! I have everything with Google-whatever.com marked as untrusted with no-scripts, so I have no problems what so ever with ad bombardment.
Who cares? Web is already equipped with Google Analytics (for years), not even mentioning dozens of other analytics services and tons of outright spyware (that doesn’t even pretend to be good).
Want privacy – cancel your Internet connection. Because it is long gone online and not coming back.
For Firefox, there is also the alternative of an extension (experimental) called ‘Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out’ ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11073 ), which states that it “is based on Google’s Advertising Cookie Opt-out Plugin, but has been modified to include the opt out cookies for a number of other advertising companies.”
EDIT : read more about it here : http://www.dubfire.net/opt-out/
They don’t have a plug in (yet), but at this site you can click once and be opted out of ALL of the ad networks (not just Google).
http://www.privacychoice.net
Jim great site, have written an article about them today.
I use Ace VPN to protect my privacy. Costs me $5 per month but atleast I know the web sites cannot keep track of me. You can use any VPN but make sure they dont keep logs about your activities.
http://www.acevpn.com
I smell spam. How is using a VPN going to protect you from cookies?