Ad group blasts cookie-privacy project from Mozilla, Stanford

Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO Randall Rothenberg calls the effort to determine which cookies should be blocked or allowed a “Kangaroo Cookie Court” that will hurt small Internet publishers.

The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is working with Mozilla on a project called the Cookie Clearinghouse to try to improve Internet privacy controls.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, a group that represents hundreds of Internet advertisers, has attacked Mozilla’s involvement in a Stanford Law School privacy project to judge whether individual Web sites can be trusted to set behavior-tracking browser cookies.

The IAB doesn’t like the Cookie Clearninghouse, which Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society and Mozilla announced on June 19. The project aims to rate individual to bring privacy ratings for browser cookies — the small text files that Web site operators can store on people’s computers. Cookies can be useful for remembering that you’re logged into a site or for not showing you the same ad over and over, but they can also track behavior across the Web so advertisers see what Web sites you’ve been visiting.

“The Cookie Clearinghouse will develop and maintain an ‘allow list’ and ‘block list’ to help Internet users make privacy choices as they move through the Internet. The Clearinghouse will identify instances where tracking is being conducted without the user’s consent, such as by third parties that the user never visited,” the project organizers said.

On Tuesday, though, the IAB castigated Mozilla for its involvement, calling the clearinghouse a “Kangaroo cookie court. Adapted From  news.cnet.com

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