The Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) has launched a campaign to inform consumers about interest-based advertising and online privacy, with three videos (watch below) to explain targeted marketing and advertising, and explain what its new logo identifies. 

Called "Your Ad Choices," it's one of the largest U.S. consumer privacy campaigns to date and perfectly timed as the SOPA/PIPA debate gets consumers thinking about their online rights.

The DAA is a proponent of self-regulation in digital advertising, and introduced the Ad Choices logo last year. The DAA website receives about 100,000 weekly visits, with about 20-25% of those opting out of behavioral ads.Continue reading...

In addition to protests in cities including San Francisco (where MC Hammer spoke) and New York, an estimated 10,000 websites went dark today in a widespread Internet protest to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) now before the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) before the Senate.

The bills target foreign websites that pilfer content and sell pirated and counterfeit goods, forcing U.S. companies to stop selling ads to suspected online pirates, processing payments for illegal sales and refusing to list suspected sites in search results.

Although a number of influential politicians backed down, SOPA's author and lead backer, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), told The Wall Street Journal today that the bill addresses concerns and isn't censorship, commenting: “It’s easy to engage in fear-mongering and it’s easy to raise straw men and red herrings, but if they read the bill they will be reassured.”

Smith, however, lost serious support among his colleagues.Continue reading...

Wikipedia is going offline on Jan. 18th as part of the mass online protest against SOPA: The Stop Online Piracy Act.  As the site explains:

The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate – that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia. This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made.Continue reading...

Google is making its search engine results even more personal and social, with three new features that integrate Google+ results into search revealed today.

As Google's blog post explains, "Search is still limited to a universe of webpages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met. Today, we’re changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search. We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step in this direction by introducing three new features."

Update: Twitter objected to the move, which steps on its role as a breaking news platform by favoring Google+, although Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt commented that Twitter and Facebook are welcome to integrate their users' content, too. Find out more on how Google's getting more social below.Continue reading...

It’s only fitting that the world’s dominant social network will reportedly go public in the second quarter of 2012 in what could be the largest IPO by any technology or Internet company in history. Facebook hopes to raise $10 billion through a limited IPO that would value the company at an astounding $100 billion.

Of the thirteen IPOs completed at a value higher than $10 billion, three are U.S. companies according to Dealogic: Visa at $19.7 billion in 2008; General Motors at $18.1 billion in 2010; and AT&T Wireless Services Inc. at $10.6 billion in 2000. The largest U.S. Internet IPO to date was the $1.9 billion offering of Google shares in 2004, which valued Google at $23 billion.

Facebook will cross the 500-shareholder limit within the next month, triggering SEC requirement to publically disclose financial information by April. While 2011 saw promising debuts of online brands like Groupon and Pandora, maintaining those leads has underwhelmed expectations.Continue reading...

Just when you thought you had your online privacy settings all figured out, along comes Take This Lollipop.

Give this Facebook app permission to connect to your profile and up comes a video of a jittery, sweaty man sitting at a computer in a dark room scratching around on a Facebook user profile… on your Facebook user profile, to be exact.Continue reading...

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz’s keynote at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., this week pitched his agency’s "privacy by design" approach to online information sharing. Leibowitz frequently used the term "cyberazzi" for online intrusions consumers need more control over.  

"A host of invisible cyberazzi — cookies and other data catchers — follow us as we browse, reporting our every stop and action to marketing firms that, in turn, collect an astonishingly complete profile of our online behavior. Whenever we click, so do they," said Liebowitz. "Cyberazzi need to stay away from our kids, at least without parental consent."

He clarified that his remarks referred to “surreptitiously placed software” that turns information into a commodity beyond user’s control – and not a reference to online marketing.Continue reading...

Gucci bags, Apple iClones, New Balance sneakers, jeans of all stripes, Oakley sunglasses, you name it. Head out to any major urban strip, market or sidewalk vendor and you'll find a plethora of knock-offs laid out on a table, selling for a low, low price.

Well, fakers beware. There are now 38 countries committed to an international anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting agreement.

At an Oct. 1st meeting in Tokyo, the United States and seven other nations signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which aims to stamp out piracy and intellectual property theft. Other new ACTA signatories include New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, Japan, and Morocco.

Prior to signing, the US was embroiled in debates over the sections of the agreement pertaining to IP protection on the web, a hot-button issue that alarmed online privacy watchdogs such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with some concerned about ACTA's constitutionality.Continue reading...