FTC's new behavioral-ad guidelines

The Federal Trade Commission has just issued guidelines for behavioral advertising, a practice in which a marketer targets ads at a person or group based on their online activities, the San Jose Mercury News reports. The guidelines say Web sites must disclose to their users the data they're collecting on their activities "and give them a chance to opt out" of the data collection. "Privacy advocates immediately criticized the guidelines, which rely on the online advertising industry to regulate itself, as failing to adequately protect consumers. The four nonbinding principles laid out in the 48-page report are for industry self-regulation and "do not have the force of law," the Mercury News reports.

Congess eyeing online privacy

Seasoned bloggers, social networkers, and mobile-phone Twitterers pretty much know their lives are very public, but they're also concerned about their privacy, the New York Times points out. "Those same questions of data collection and privacy policies are attracting the attention of Congress, too," the Times reports, so lawmakers are doing some information-gathering: "On Aug. 1, four top members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent letters ordering 33 cable and Internet companies, including Google, Microsoft, Comcast and Cox Communications, to provide details about their privacy standards. That followed House and Senate hearings last month about privacy and behavioral targeting, in which advertisers show ads to consumers based on their travels around the Web. One apparent result, the Wall Street Journal reports, is that "Yahoo Inc. said it will allow users to stop receiving targeted ads based on factors like what Web pages they visit or other ads they click on." The Journal added that "Google, Microsoft and a number of Yahoo's competitors already allow customers to opt out" of such ads.