Google, Yahoo named in privacy complaint by advocacy groups

Three advocacy groups yesterday filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), demanding an investigation into the growing privacy threats to individual internet users from the practices conducted by Google, Yahoo and others.

The US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the World Privacy Forum (WPF) challenged the FTC to investigate the real-time bidding technologies used by internet companies from the practices conducted by the real-time data-targeting auction and exchange online marketplace.

The group said that increasingly, and largely unknown to the public, technologies enabling the real-time profiling, targeting, and auctioning of consumers is becoming commonplace.

Adding to the privacy threat, says the new complaint, is the incorporation and expanding role of an array of outside data sources available for sale online that provides detailed information on a consumer.

The technology used by these internet companies helps marketers analyse individual internet users in real time and place advertising based on that information through online exchanges.

''Consumers will be most shocked to learn that companies are instantaneously combining the details of their online lives with information from previously unconnected offline databases without their knowledge, let alone consent,'' said US PIRG consumer program director Ed Mierzwinski.