NEW YORK-The chief operating officer of DoubleClick, Kevin O'Connor issued a statement recently concerning the Internet advertiser's plan to trace Web surfer's activities from site to site and combine that information into idenitifiable profiles for later target marketing.
"Over the past few weeks, DoubleClick has been at the center of the Internet privacy controversy. During this time, we have met and listened to hundreds of consumers, privacy advocates, customers, government officials and industry leaders about these issues. The overwhelming point of contention has been under what circumstances names can be associated with anonymous user activity across Web sites."
"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.'' "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."
"We commit today, that until there is agreement between government and industry on privacy standards, we will not link personally identifiable information to anonymous user activity across Web sites," promised O'Connor.
"This action does not affect our core business activity. It means we are going to await clear industry standards before we decide the future direction of a number of new products. We will continue to expand our successful media, technology, e-mail and offline data businesses. We will also continue to abide by common industry practices in building anonymous profiles for ad targeting."
