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The Federal Trade Commission said Monday that it settled with online advertising provider Chitika for allegedly tracking online activities of users who had opted out of the company’s service.
The consumer protection agency had been investigating Chitika for deceptive practices, it said. Between May 2008 and February 2010, the company allegedly placed cookies on the Web browsers of consumers who had explicitly asked to bar the tracking service from collecting information to be used for behavioral advertising.
Chitika had stopped tracking those users for just 10 days and then resumed placing cookies on their browsers to target ads, the FTC said.
In a settlement agreed to unanimously by the FTC, Chitika agreed to stop making misleading statements about the extend of its data collection and to extend to five years the period it is barred from tracking users to opt out of its service.
"Personally identifiable information is of no interest to me whatsoever," says Chitika CEO and founder Venkat Kolluri. "Our advertisements only worry about what you want, not who you are."
