OT: DoubleClick Blocking

[A Perl Monger <perlcoder@insightbb.com>]

<RANT>

I decided the other day that I despise DoubleClick and their insidious
practice of collecting your web activity and behavior. I blocked their
domain on my firewall and all my clients now are complaining that they
can't view web sites associated with CMP, Fawcette Publications, among a
large group; even O'Reilly uses DoubleClick. Though Ziff-Davis has some
DoubleClick junk, they aren't running a script causing a temporary
redirect (that is what is being blocked) and my folks can get to ZD
content. It's interesting how many web sites are not available all of a
sudden by that one block! DoubleClick is big brother! 

I complained to a couple of webmasters at a couple of big publishers and
this is a reply I got just a minute ago:
"I understand your position, and what you
are trying to do.  At this time all I can add is that there is
software out there that you can acquire to accomplish what you
want.  I don't have the specifics, but I am sure you can find
out." This was after a week of going back and forth with tech
support on my firewall rules and trying to duplicate what I am getting.
All I want is to have my subnet clients view web content without their
browsers being redirected to Doubleclick.

Essentially, my position is that I don't feel DoubleClick (nor any of the
advertising houses) has any right to be collecting demographic and 
browsing behavior information without permission. I feel I have the right
to choose not to have information collected. I don't care about the ads
themselves, I care about what is collected. I know I can collect quite a
bit of personal information from anyone who visits my websites without
your knowledge, I don't even require that you have a Java Engine running
nor cookies enabled. If I can do it, so can they. I have learned from
carefully scrutinizing some advertising agencies and investigating their
computers ;) that they are collecting a very large amount of data and
this information is quite personal - like your name, your computer's
name, your email address, your IP address, your ISP's IP and ALL their
information concerning demographics and such. A lot of information I
don't care to allow if I have any say so. I feel this is an invasion of
my privacy and my clients' privacy.

ARGGHHH! I hate DoubleClick the worst.

</RANT>