DoubleClick CEO Kevin O’Connor said in a statement yesterday that his firm will not merge names with anonymous user activity across Web sites until clear privacy standards have been agreed on.
O’Connor said he made this decision after discussions with consumers, privacy advocates, customers, government officials and industry leaders.
“It is clear from these discussions that I made a mistake by planning to merge names with anonymous user activity across Web sites in the absence of government and industry privacy standards,” he said. “Let me be clear: DoubleClick has not implemented this plan, and has never associated names, or any other personally identifiable information, with anonymous user activity across Web sites.”
O’Connor continued that the action does not affect DoubleClick’s core business activity — building anonymous profiles for ad targeting. He added that the firm will continue to expand its media, technology, e-mail and offline data businesses.
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