I don't want a cookie relationship with you

[piccolomondo]

There is a relationship between PayPal and DoubleClick that goes beyond the typical advertising model relationship.

Why does Paypal secretly send you through Doubleclick to get to some of its web pages?


PayPal, DoubleClick and Third Party Cookies

Leo Laport and Steve Gibson dissect the "Links" on PayPal's site with an eye toward reverse engineering the reason for many of them routing PayPal's users through servers owned by DoubleClick. They explain how third-party cookies can violate your privacy and what to do about it.

podcast [mp3, 70min]

We know that security is not black and white, that you use multiple layers, you do as many of the best things as you are able to, recognizing that none of them is perfect. But, you know, raising your defenses as high as you can is a good thing to do. [...]

Well, that brings us to the whole point of this podcast, which is that PayPal has found a way to explicitly force a cookie relationship between us and DoubleClick. [...]

But Google owns DoubleClick. So Google doesn't need to route it through DoubleClick. So, you know, this could be happening with everything you do. In fact, it is, in effect, because I don't know what Google shares with their subsidiary, DoubleClick. But presumably they share everything with them. [...]

Related post:

Google's privacy practices

[piccolomondo]

Global corporations must expect to be under global surveillance

The Big G search engine is under simultaneous investigation by the US and European anti-trust authorities. Both are probing whether its acquisition of DoubleClick, whose technology puts adverts on the web, is against the public interest. [...]

The Federal Trade Commission will approve Google's $3.1 billion DoubleClick acquisition as early as next week. Microsoft had led the charge against the merger, claiming it would give Google control over 80 percent of online advertising, but it is in no position to preach.

Obstacles still remain for the the merger, which will continue to face anti-trust review in Europe and separate, privacy-related complaint filed with the FTC by he Electronic Privacy Information Center and other groups.


A separate investigation by the EU is examining its approach to privacy.
Even without DoubleClick, Google holds information about the private activities of its users that the intelligence agencies would die for. It has offered concessions to the EU committee (such as reducing from 30 years to two or less the time that data-collecting "cookies" reside on our PCs), but these do not go far enough. There must be openness about exactly what data Google harbours, how safe it is and what it is used for. Consumers must be allowed to find out what information about them the company can access. [...]

[piccolomondo]

Privacy Groups Question F.T.C. Chairwoman's DoubleClick Ties

The Center for Digital Democracy and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) jointly filed a complaint [pdf] with the Federal Trade Commission today asking the commission's chairwoman, Deborah Platt Majoras, to recuse herself from the commission's review of Google's merger with DoubleClick.

The organizations recently learned that the husband of the FTC Chairman has taken on Doubleclick as a client for his Washington, D.C. law firm, where Ms. Majoras also worked.

Privacy groups have been fighting Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick, an ad-serving company, because they say it would give Google access to too much data about Web users. The two organizations have filed other complaints about the proposed merger.

See EPIC's page on Privacy? Proposed Google-DoubleClick Merger.

[piccolomondo]

Privacy Groups Question F.T.C. Chairwoman's DoubleClick Ties

Despite the fact that her husband is a partner for a firm that represents DoubleClick, FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras will not recuse herself from the Google-DoubleClick merger case, she announced today.

Her husband, John Majoras claims not to be involved in this case. But as a partner in the firm, won't he profit from the case regardless of whether he works on it?

[piccolomondo]

F.T.C. Clears Google-DoubleClick Deal

NYT reports:

U.S. antitrust regulators approved Google Inc.'s $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick Inc. Thursday, removing a key obstacle to a formidable combination in the burgeoning online advertising sector.

The transaction still faces substantial antitrust scrutiny from European regulators and cannot be completed without their approval. The European Commission has set a deadline of April 2 to finish its review.

The Federal Trade Commission appeared to accept many of Google's arguments that its online ad sales business doesn't compete with DoubleClick's ad-serving tools, saying its analysis ''showed that the companies are not direct competitors in any relevant antitrust market.''

...

Privacy advocates also strongly opposed the deal, saying the combined company will have access to a huge amount of data on individual Web-surfing habits. The FTC said it lacked the legal authority to block the deal on any grounds except on antitrust matters.

However, in an apparent nod to these concerns, the FTC on Thursday proposed a set of privacy guidelines for the online advertising industry, describing them as something that ''clearly transcend'' the Google-DoubleClick deal. It remains to be seen how such guidelines would be enforced.

Privacy advocates were not assuaged. [...]

[piccolomondo]

Google Responds To Rep. Joe Barton's letter with 24 privacy questions in this 22 pages PDF file.

Highlights:

Cookies and anonymizing cookie data

We plan to anonymize cookies that form part of our server search logs by deleting the ID number of each such cookie. For example, if a cookie that we serve to a computer at the time that a user searches with Google Search from that computer is assigned the number 740674ce2123e969, then 18 months after the search query is entered we plan to delete that unique cookie ID number in its entirety. Though we have not yet anonymized these cookies, we plan to do so by January 2008 and we plan to make this change retroactive.

If Google does not intend to merge or combine the data Google retains with the information or data retained or collected by DoubleClick, please describe the efficiencies of the Google-DoubleClick merger.

As noted above, we have not completed the acquisition, and we are new to the third-party display ad serving business, so we have not yet decided whether or how we would merge DoubleClick and Google data. However, the Google-DoubleClick merger presents numerous efficiencies unrelated to any data that DoubleClick collects. In fact, the data that DoubleClick collects via its cookies was not a factor in our decision to pursue the merger.

For instance, acquiring DoubleClick's expertise in display ad serving will assist Google in its efforts to design an integrated interface for advertisers to manage their text and display advertising campaigns. In addition, the acquisition will allow Google to provide advertisers with better metrics

[...]