[18. 12. 2012] AGF has published a leaflet raising the awareness of, especially, families for the problem of behavioural advertisment on the internet. The leaflet informs about how to protect against tracking and how to block ads with simple methods free of charge, also to beware children of being affected by undesirable content.
Online ads are really annoying to many consumers, but they have learned to ignore banners and other traditional advertisement. So advertisers have seeked for other methods to ensure the consumers’ attraction and found it in behavioural or targeted advertisment. Thus, the consumers will only receive ads “of interest” for them and will be less bothered. But considering the amount of private information necessary for targeted advertisement, many concerns remain.
To protect ones privacy also on the internet and to safeguard children, the leaflet “”Die Einstellung macht’s: Werbung und Privatsphäre im Internet” (German only) gives hints how tracking and behavioural advertisment can be banned with simple browser settings. The review focusses on the most known browsers Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Safari.
The AGF leaflet is based on the english original from COFACE ‘Behavioural advertising and privacy: browsers can help’.