The IT Nerd

If you’ve ever surfed the web…. And let’s face it, that would be all of us… You’ve likely noticed that the ads that are displayed on some web pages are seem to have you in mind. That can be a bit creepy. If you live in Canada, you will be able to solve that problem with an opt out tool that is in the works:

Canadians who get creeped out by web ads that seem to know a little too much about their personal habits should have access in the coming months to an opt-out tool that will help fight the effect of so-called behavioural advertising.

IAB Canada, a non-profit association representing the digital marketing and advertising industry, is currently in negotiations with the Digital Advertising Alliance in the U.S. to adopt its self-regulating program, which is already in place south of the border.

While browsers do have the ability to do some of this for you, having an opt out system is great as it has the potential to better respect your privacy. It is a voluntary and self regulating program, so your mileage may vary. Having said that there is a similar system in the US that appears to have some degree of success. We’ll see what happens in Canada.

This entry was posted on May 16, 2012 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Canada, Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.