Salon.com > online advertising http://www.salon.com Fri, 04 Jan 2013 22:05:06 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 An online privacy invader gets caught http://www.salon.com/2012/12/05/an_online_privacy_invader_gets_caught/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/05/an_online_privacy_invader_gets_caught/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2012 20:16:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13116129 News from the privacy wars: The Federal Trade Commission and Epic Marketing, an online ad network, have settled charges that Epic was secretly and illegally gathering information on the browsing history of Web users, a practice known as "history sniffing" or "history stealing."

And not just any kind of history. Epic was specifically looking for people who had visited websites searching for information on "fertility issues, impotence, menopause, incontinence, disability insurance, credit repair, debt relief, and personal bankruptcy." Epic divided these people up into "interest groups" and targeted advertisements to them. So if, for example, you Googled "impotence" and visited a few Web pages with relevant information, the next time you checked out CNN.com you might suddenly be assaulted by a slew of Viagra and Cialis advertisements.

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