DoubleClick Inc. will pay $1.8 million in legal fees and institute several new privacy protections as part of a settlement of all federal and state class action privacy lawsuits against it.
The agreement allows the firm to continue offering all of its products and services, according to DoubleClick. But compliance will be reviewed annually for two years by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The firm, which was hit with the suits over two years ago, has agreed to provide the following:
*Clear notice—the firm's privacy policy will include easy-to-read descriptions of its ad-serving services
*Enhanced choice—Personally identifiable information collected by the company can only be combined with previously generated clickstream data if the consumer opts in
*Consumer education—The firm will undertake an effort including delivery 300 million consumer privacy banner ads
*Consistency—The firm will ensure that a consumer's online data will not be used in a manner inconsistent with the stated privacy policy
*Purging of data and cookie life—The firm will limit to five years the life of new ad serving cookies, and purge online data obtained while testing the merging of offline and online data. It will also institute internal policies to protect and routinely purge data collected online
The settlement was described as a "very good result" by Seth Lesser, Dennis Stewar, Bryan Clobes and Ira Rothken, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs.
"We are pleased that we accomplished the mail goal of the litigation—namely to ensure that there is a strong set of protections in the event DoubleClick attempts to merge clickstream and personal information," added Jules Polonetsky, chief privacy officer for DoubleClick, in a statement.
DoubleClick said it had accounted for the legal fee payment as part of its third-quarter operating expenses.
The settlement will be finalized on May 21 in the U.S. District court for the Southern District of New York.
