Doubleclick Privacy Suit Settlement Approved

behrman writes: "This Yahoo-hosted version of a C|Net article announces that Doubleclick is now allowed to settle the class-action privacy suit against it. Terms include purging databases of personal information, hiring a third-party company to ensure compliance, running a 33-million-banner-ad privacy education campaign, and requiring opt-in for future marketing data collection. This makes the preliminary approval from two months ago offical. Other (older) stories: Privacy groups oppose the settlement, and the settlement is proposed."

Hello.

[C4v3_7r0ll]

One freakin' reply in two hours? WTF?

On topic: Something finally going right for the consumer. The only downside to the deletion of customer data is that it was probably already sold and re-sold so it's no that big a deal.

doubleclick.

[littlerubberfeet]

well, much like the record companies, doubleclick has a slightly flawed buisness model. Collecting personal information to advertise is flawed. Most people don't like their personal information to be spread about, they like the semblance of control. If enough people opt out of doubleclick's program, they go bankrupt. Won't happen though

Opt-Out cookies and the rest of that BS won't help my Grandmother who just doesn't know the technology. We should be trying to protect the people who (by choice or not) are ignorant.

Opt-Out Cookies Suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Opting out by use of cookies doesn't work for me anyway. I have Opera set up to reject all cookies, and I only use IE for the very few sites that require cookies, such as my online bank.

It would be nice if they were forced to use an opt-in policy. Of course this would destroy their database as no one would do so. Unless collection of personal information is made illegal, we'll have to put up with it indefinitely.

Doesn't matter much - I blacklisted them ages ago

[EricLivingston]

I deny all connections to doubleclick.com and doubleclick.net (along with about 70 other urls) in my router, so none of this crap gets near the machines on my home LAN. it's scary how many dozens of blocks occur in just a few hours of normal surfing...

33 Million banner adds ?

[Monkelectric]

At what banner adds cost right now, whats that likely to cost, like 30,000$? How come I'm always getting screwed, and the laywers are always getting stuff?

Unpunished?

[kilroy_hau]

So it goes like this:

DoubleClick was charged with violating state and federal laws by surreptitiously tracking and collecting consumers' personally identifiable data and combining it with information on their Web surfing habits.

But they agreed to delete this information after they were caught, so everything is ok now, isn't it?

What if somebody steals money?. Would he avoid jail just by returning the money after he is caught?

What if a hacker lets loose a virus but deletes the source on his machine after he is caught?