The settlement agreement will result in the dismissal of class
action privacy lawsuits that were filed against DoubleClick from
January 2000. The lawsuits, which were consolidated last year,
alleged that DoubleClick violated state and federal laws by
tracking and collecting consumers’ personal details and combining
it with information on their web surfing habits.
There will be a hearing on 21st May in the United States
District Court for the Southern District of New York to address
final court approval of the settlement agreement.
As part of the agreement, DoubleClick has agreed to adhere to
the following practices and policies:
- Clear Notice: The company's privacy
policy will include easy-to-read explanations of its online ad
serving services.
- Enhanced Choice: If the company
collects personally identifiable information, previously collected
"clickstream" obtained by the company from across web sites can
only be combined with the personally identifiable information after
the provision of clear and conspicuous notice to the Internet user
and receipt of the internet user's opt-in choice.
- Consumer Education: The company will
undertake a consumer education effort, which includes 300 million
consumer privacy banner ads that invite consumers to learn more
about how to protect their on-line privacy.
- Consistency: The company will ensure
that an internet user's on-line data will not be used in a manner
materially inconsistent with the privacy policy under which it was
collected, unless the consumer has given permission to do
otherwise. The company will take steps to require that a successor
to DoubleClick's business does not use internet users' on-line data
in a manner inconsistent with the privacy policy under which that
data was collected.
- Purging of Data and Cookie Life: The
company will institute internal policies to ensure the protection
and routine purging of data collected online. The company will also
purge on-line data it obtained during the course of testing the
manner in which on-line and off-line data could be merged. The
company has also agreed to limit to five years the life of new ad
serving cookies.
- Settlement Compliance: A nationally
recognised independent accounting firm will conduct annual reviews
for the next two years of DoubleClick's compliance with specified
terms of the settlement, expanding on DoubleClick's current
auditing program with PricewaterhouseCoopers.
- Legal Fees: Legal fees and costs of
up to $1.8 million will be paid by the company.
The term of the settlement is two years.
