Google Ad Test – You can say No

Hi,

Google is testing a new system to help advertisers serve and manage ads across the web.

They’ve set a cookie on ours computer browsers when we view one of these ads.

It’s everything based on cookies and and Web beacon.

First, let me explain what are both. Cookies are a small piece of text file sent to your computer and saved by your browser. A cookie ID is an alphanumeric string associated with a particular cookie.

A Web beacon is a 1×1 pixel .gif image that advertisers place on their webpages. When you visit these pages, the web beacons can send your browser type, IP address, and other basic information to a server so advertisers can analyze the effectiveness of their ad campaigns.

You can clean cookies and web beacon using:

- Firefox :

1. Open a Firefox browser window.
2. Click Tools, then click Clear Private Data.
3. Click the Privacy tab.
4. Check on the box – Cookies.
5. Click OK.

- Explorer:

1. Open an Internet Explorer browser window.
2. Click Tools, then click Internet Options.
3. Click the Delete Cookies tab

Coming back to the Google testing, What do they do with the collected information?

According to the website, they say “We may share with additional third parties certain aggregated, non-personal information, such as ad click-through rate by time of day or geographical location.

In addition, we may share the information with other companies or individuals in the following limited circumstances:

• We provide such information to our subsidiaries, affiliated companies, or other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of processing the information on our behalf or our advertising customer’s behalf. We require that these parties agree to process such information based on our instructions and in compliance with this policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
• We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation, or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues, or (c) protect against imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, its advertising customers, its users, or the public as required or permitted by law.

Even though Google has reliable policies and security servers, I really don’t like to see my data being shared with third parties. I’m a stronger believer of Online Reputation Management and I even take care of pictures that friends take of me in birthdays parties worry about material tagged with my name being uploaded.

By default Google has enable the option, if you’d like to disable there’s the link: Google Opt out .

Cheers

Lucio Dias Ribeiro

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