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back to article Web marketers pledge easier targeted ads opt-out

Online advertisers have pledged to make it easier for people surfing the web to opt out of targeted advertising that closely monitors viewing habits and other personal information. Under a program announced Monday, participating websites would display an advertising option icon next to ads that collect user data that explains …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Ads? What ads?

    I've got Adblock Plus, Beef TACO, Ghostery, BetterPrivacy and OptimizeGoogle. I never see any ads or retain any cookies.

    So I couldn't care less about any 'opt-out' button these liars pretend they will be introducing.

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    1. The BigYin
      Reply Icon

      Beef TACO? Ghostery?

      Beef TACO and Ghostery were new to me (just installed Ghostery). I also use Flashblock, NoScript, CookieCuller and GreaseMonkey. It's a shame that we have to go to so much trouble these days.

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  2. Quxy
    FAIL

    Yeah, right...

    A "pledge" from the Direct "legalise UCE" Marketing Association? This is going to be just as counter-productive as clicking on the "unsubscribe me" links in penis pill email spam.

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  3. Dazed and Confused

    easily identifiable cookies.

    How about them just agreeing to use easily identifiable cookies so we can just block them.

    I don't want to have to find the "leave me alone" button every time I go to a website, I want to be able to set my browser up in such a way that ignores these guys. If websites then choose not to offer me "free" content because I don't want to play their games, fine so be it, I'm happy with that too.

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  4. Tom 35

    They keep saying ads are useful, and people want them

    So why not make it opt-in? Since they are so useful I'm sure everyone would want to opt-in right?

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  5. Mike Flugennock
    FAIL

    Nahh, that's OK, thanks...

    ...I already use AdBlock Plus and NoScript. Thanks for the thought, though.

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  6. Shannon Jacobs
    Big Brother

    Who owns me?

    Opt-Out is a load of garbage. (Yes, I wanted to use the spelling variation on the fish named "carp".)

    My personal information should be MY property. The fundamentally backwards premise of all of these marketing basket cases (Yes again with regards to children born out of wedlock.) is that they have some right to collect MY personal information and use it AGAINST me to sell me as much useless carp as possible. All of the named basket cases, but especially Amazon, who didn't even get mentioned in the article. (I read a LOT of books, and I have tried Amazon, but I do not plan on EVER buying ANYTHING from that company EVER again.)

    Dreaming, but the way it should work is that any company that wants access to my personal information should be required to tell me why and get my permission for LIMITED usage, especially as regards to how long they need to look at it. This could actually be done in a mostly automatic way, though it would require some legislative support of which there is NO chance, since all of the politicians are even bigger basket cases than the big business basket cases. (The automatic version would involve a personal privacy profile that each person could store to specify how most of the default situations should be handled. For example, a certified bank responding to my loan application has a good reason to see some of my historical financial information until the loan is paid off. A loan shark looking for debtors to victimize should have NO right to ANY of my personal information.)

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  7. Mike Cardwell

    Solved problem

    No Script + Flash Block + Better Privacy + Cookie Monster + AdBlock + Ghostery + Beef TACO

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    my crystal gonad says

    the participating websites will get less money for the non-targeted ads so will carefully hide the 'opt out' button

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