Privacy, Advertising | featured news

The two-year-old drive to give consumers a simple way to block companies from tracking their behavior as they move across the Internet has faltered, say participants in the process who are struggling to reconcile privacy concerns with an advertising model that pays for many free Internet services.

In split-second auctions, companies are jockeying for the chance to buy online ads geared to your specific tastes. But consumer advocates see a risk of a computer-generated class system.

A group of iPhone and iPad users have sued Apple Inc alleging that certain applications (apps) were passing personal user information to third-party advertisers without consent, a court filing showed.

MySpace and some popular applications have been transmitting information to outside advertising companies that could be used to identify users, a Journal investigation found.

The Federal Trade Commission has been gently pressuring the Internet advertising industry to reveal more information to consumers about how it collects data and targets ads.