Is a European Union letter to a privacy advocate going to change the future of online advertising forever?
A few days ago we highlighted how certain websites are blocking ad-blockers themselves, things have certainly come to a head since then.
The Register carried a story recently which covered Alexander Hanff, privacy campaigner and programmer’s attempts to seek clarity on issues surrounding the blocking of ad-blockers from the European Union.
The issue is surrounding EU law that came into effect in May 2011 which requires that people consent before an anti-ad-blocker script is run on their computers.
Alexander Hanff has since then received a letter from the EU indicating that adblocking sniffer activities may actually be in violation of EU privacy laws. What is the commotion all about?
We talked with Alexander Hanff, CEO at Think Privacy Inc. Think Privacy was founded by Hanff as a response to ‘continuing encroachment of Big Data on Privacy’.
It came to Hanff’s notice about 14 months ago that some publishers were circumventing adblocking tools in order to display ads. He decided to take upon himself to do something to remedy the situation.
Hanff has been involved in the public consultation that led to changes in the ePrivacy Directive in 2009 and has been involved in the issue for a very long time.He tells CointelegraphCT r: 33 : “It is my belief (now reinforced by the EU Commission opinion) that a user installing an adblocker is facilitating the recommendations of Recital 66 of 2009/136/EC which states that a citizen may use settings of a web browser or other applications as a means to indicate whether or not they consent to web sites storing and/or accessing stored information on their devices.” According to Hanff, this recital was the result of very heavy lobbying, which he witnessed first hand during the […]
