Search-targeted advertising network Chitika �reached a settlement this week with the Federal Trade Commission over illegally tracking consumers behavior online. According to the FTC, Chitika allowed users to opt out of having cookies placed on their browsers and receiving targeted ads, but unfortunately, Chitika's opt-out only lasted 10 days. After this period, Chitika continued to track these consumers' behavior on the web even though they opted out. This took place from at least May 2008 through February 2010, says the FTC. Chitika says this was an unintentional error in their tracking systems. How much was it worth to Chikita to flaunt the privacy rules? Not much. Chitika tells us that it earned an estimated $0.55 from the users who requested to opt out but were tracked starting ten days after their request instead of ten years. Basically, their claim is that this was totally accidental and not a way to create more revenue (illegally) for the network. Chitika?s cookies track search history and sites visited but the network says no personally identifiable information is collected ? the cookies contain no information on a user?s name, age, gender, etc.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/myIqiVRtz04/
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