Online Ads, Privacy | featured news

The two-year-old drive to give consumers a simple way to block companies from tracking their behavior as they move across the Internet has faltered, say participants in the process who are struggling to reconcile privacy concerns with an advertising model that pays for many free Internet services.

In split-second auctions, companies are jockeying for the chance to buy online ads geared to your specific tastes. But consumer advocates see a risk of a computer-generated class system.

Facebook users' personal information could have been accidentally leaked to third parties, in particular advertisers, over the past few years, according to Symantec Corp's official web blog.