DoubleClick Inc., New York, launched a five-point consumer Internet privacy protection initiative yesterday.
Called the “Internet Privacy Education Campaign,” the program is designed to help individuals understand that they have the power to protect their privacy online. In support of the campaign, DoubleClick is sponsoring 50 million banner advertisements, which link users to www.privacychoices.com, a DoubleClick site that allows consumers to opt-out of the DoubleClick cookie as well as provides information about online privacy.
The five point plan includes: DoubleClick doing business in the United States only with Web sites that have clear and effective privacy policy statements on their sites; engaging PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP to perform privacy audits from time to time to maintain customer and consumer confidence; establishing a Consumer Privacy Advisory Board of consumer advocates, security experts, and authorities in online privacy to advise on how to improve privacy policies; hiring a chief privacy officer to oversee the implementation of DoubleClick’s privacy policies, to act as a resource for Internet users, to work with advertisers and starting and maintaining privacy policies of their own, and to educate the public about DoubleClick’s role in privacy leadership.
The initiative comes in the wake of last Thursday’s filing of a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about DoubleClick’s alleged misleading of consumers by the non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center. The complaint claims that DoubleClick planned to track Internet users through the Web and then link that data with actual names, addresses, and other segmented data is deceptive and unfair.
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