What does DoubleClick know about me?
What's Abacus and what does it do?
What's "online profiling" or "online preference marketing"?
What's P3P?
What about the Abacus-DoubleClick merger?

What does DoubleClick know about me?

Internet advertising. If you have a unique ad-serving cookie from DoubleClick, that cookie contains a number (and an expiration date). That cookie is associated with your browser, but not with your name, address, or other information that could be considered "personally identifying"--that is, associated with you in the real world. Once a browser has this unique ad-serving cookie, for example, cookie 123, DoubleClick's ad-serving database will reflect which ads cookie 123 has seen, so that the same ads are not shown too many times to your browser. Also, when you are visiting a website in the U.S. that has agreed to share information for "marketing scores," DoubleClick's ad-serving database notes the fact that cookie 123 has visited a "sports" site, or a "gardening" site. That information is aggregated with information from the other DoubleClick client websites that your browser has visited recently--if the site is participating in sharing this information and has provided certain required disclosures in its privacy policy--and a marketing score is generated. DoubleClick does not know nor do we attempt to know the real-world identity of the owner or user of a computer's browser.

Based on those scores, a browser may receive more "sports" ads, or more "gardening" ads, depending on your browser's activities. Your browser's marketing scores, and the ads you receive, reflect all of the activities of everyone who uses your computer's browser. So, if you share your browser with your spouse or other family members or friends, the ads you see may reflect their interests as well as yours. However, as described below, certain "sensitive" sites are not included in the creation of these scores. For more information about our marketing scores, click here.

There is also information all Internet companies can glean from your computer's connection. For more information about Internet advertising and the information it collects, click here.

Email. If you give your email address to a company for an email newsletter or other message and DoubleClick delivers the email, DoubleClick's email databases contain your email address and the name or number of the newsletters to which you subscribe. That information is not associated with your ad serving marketing scores or ad-serving cookie, and is used only to deliver that email you have agreed to receive. For more information about DoubleClick's email services, please click here.

If you provide your email address to a company and "opt-in" to receive marketing messages from other companies (such as DoubleClick's PlazaDirect, www.plazadirect.com), DoubleClick's database may contain your email address and the messages you've received. In some circumstances, when you have opted-in to receive marketing emails, DoubleClick selects those messages based upon the information you provided when you gave your email address or other online or offline information that has been shared with us, including the general categories of items you like to purchase. We ask email clients to describe this practice in the privacy policy of any website to which you give your email address for third-party marketing messages.

Direct mail. The Abacus catalog division knows general household purchasing activity. This information includes individuals' names, the household address, and general types of purchases, but not credit card numbers or detailed financial information. For example, DoubleClick's databases may reflect that John Smith at 123 Main Street, Your Town, PA, frequently purchases camping equipment. As a result, that person will likely receive catalogs for related equipment and apparel.

For more information about the above, please see the "email," "Internet ad," "direct mail/catalog" and "opt-out" sections of this privacy policy.

What's Abacus and what does it do?

Abacus, a division of DoubleClick, provides direct marketing services to companies. Abacus maintains a cooperative database to which members of the Abacus Alliance, which are mostly catalog companies and other publishing companies, contribute information about their customers in exchange for information about other consumers who may be interested in their products. Members of the Abacus Alliance contribute names, addresses, and general purchase information (categories of items purchased-like "ladies' apparel"--and transaction amounts) to the Abacus Alliance database. This general purchase information is maintained by household address. In return, those companies receive lists of other households that may be interested in their products. That is why you receive catalogs from companies you may not have purchased from in the past--they believe that you may be interested in their products. That is also why your neighbor may receive different catalogs than you do--your purchasing interests or history may be different.

For more information about Abacus, click here.

What's "online profiling" or "online preference marketing"?

"Online profiling" or "preference marketing" is the creation of a marketing score and the delivery of ads based on that marketing score. This process is performed in conjunction with websites in the United States and under strict disclosure guidelines. These guidelines, which can be found at www.networkadvertising.org, require that all websites sharing anonymous information for marketing scores must disclose this practice in the website's privacy policy.

Our marketing scores are derived by categorizing the types of sites your browser has visited (and, in certain circumstances, activities performed, such as words searched, or whether an action, such as a purchase, was completed) and assigning your browser a numeric score that relates to your interest in a particular topic, such as "sports" or "gardening." Based upon how interested you may be in a particular area, as shown by how frequently or recently your browser has visited a certain type of site, you may receive certain types of advertising.

All of this information is linked to your computer's numeric cookie, but none of it is linked to your name, address, or real-world identity. If you wish to not have a marketing score associated with your browser, all you need to do is go to our "opt-out" mechanism, which is linked from the home page of this privacy policy. If you have an "opt-out cookie," DoubleClick cannot identify your browser uniquely.

Please note that DoubleClick does not include in these marketing scores information that indicates a user's individual health condition, detailed financial information, sexual orientation or behavior, information that appears to relate to children under 13, or that specifies racial and ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical opinions, and trade union membership or information about visits to websites outside of the United States, even though these scores are not personally-identifiable. All websites that share information for marketing scores with DoubleClick must have a disclosure regarding this process in the website's privacy policy.

What's P3P?

The Platform for Privacy Preferences is a standardized format for websites and Internet companies to give users an automated way to understand how their information is collected or used by the websites they visit.

DoubleClick has posted a P3P policy for our website and delivers compact P3P policies with our cookies. Using Internet Explorer 6.0, choose View on the menu and the choose Privacy Report to see our P3P policy.

For more information, please visit http://www.w3.org/P3P/

What about the Abacus-DoubleClick merger?

On November 23, 1999, DoubleClick Inc. completed its merger with Abacus Direct. Shortly thereafter, DoubleClick provided notice in its privacy policy that it would implement a plan to deliver personally tailored ads to consumers by linking the personally-identifiable Abacus information about users to a user's DoubleClick cookie number. This would only happen when a user visited a website that provided notice that their personal information would be used for online marketing purposes and associated with information about them available from other sources, and offered a user the choice not to receive these tailored messages. The notice and opportunity to choose would appear on those websites that agreed to contribute user information when the user is given the opportunity to provide personally-identifiable information (e.g., on a user registration page, or on an order form).

When concerns were raised about this plan, DoubleClick Chairman Kevin O'Connor issued the following statement:

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 websites.

It is clear from these discussions that I made a mistake by planning to merge names with anonymous user activity across websites 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 websites.

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 websites.

DoubleClick worked with other Network Advertisers, in conjunction with the FTC, to develop the "Network Advertising Initiative guidelines", a model self-regulatory program for the entire ad serving industry.

On January 22, 2001 the Federal Trade Commission staff issued a letter, which included the following:

Based on this investigation, it appears to staff that DoubleClick never used or disclosed personally-identifiable consumer information (PII) for purposes other than disclosed in its privacy policy. Specifically, it appears that DoubleClick did not combine PII from Abacus Direct with clickstream collected on client websites.

For the complete letter, click here http://www.ftc.gov/os/closings/staff/doubleclick.pdf.

DoubleClick continues to develop ad-serving technologies for websites and companies that wish to advertise on the web, with a focus on implementing anonymous tools to improve an advertiser's ability to deliver relevant messages to consumers. We are committed to being open and transparent about our new products and seek input from our Privacy Advisory Board, government, advocates and Internet users about the best ways to provide our services in accordance with Fair Information Principles. Please contact us at privacy@doubleclick.net with your opinions and comments.

Contact us for more information.