Cookie Tech Educational Video Contest for FTC BT Town Hall

September 24th, 2007

As many of you may know, the Federal Trade Commission is holding a Town Hall Meeting on Thursday and Friday, November 1^st and 2^nd, to address consumer protection issues raised by the practice of behavioral targeting. BT is a prevalent marketing strategy these days, one which several TRUSTe sealholders practice, and we would like to encourage you to participate in Esther Dyson’s Cookie Crumble video contest, the winners of which will be featured during Ms. Dyson’s 90-minute presentation at the Town Hall. Her complete call for participation can be viewed here but the general idea of it is this: create a video that explains how cookies work and then post it on YouTube. The videos with the most views on YouTube will be featured during the presentation, and fame and glory will be yours. The story line (some or all should be included):

- How cookies work (text snippets stored in the user’s browser, which are placed by a server (an ad server or the visited website’s server) and then submitted to the server when the user revisits the cookie-placing server or ad network.
- Website cookies vs. ad network or third-party or tracking cookies
- What data cookies contain in their pure form
- How other data can be *associated* with anonymous cookie data
- How to delete cookies
- What cookies are used for: ease of sign-in, targeting ads, ad frequency capping, monitoring various kinds of user behavior (individually or in the aggregate)
- How cookies can be misused

You may be as creative as you like, and you can be as honest as you like. There is no set deadline, but the sooner the better so you can get as many views as possible in the time between now and the selection. TRUSTe will be happy to assist in promoting your videos using outlets at our disposal. Consumer education is one of the major stumbling blocks of protecting privacy in behavioral targeting, and this is a clever way to bring your ideas and concerns to the public forum. Please feel free to contact edyson@boxbe.com or post your comments on the contest page.

for more information about the contest. We appreciate your contribution!

Entry Filed under: All