The provisions in the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) contain special requirements for websites that permit the access of children under age 13. These websites must get a parent’s permission before they can collect, use or disclose a child’s personal information. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposes to revise the definition of personal information. The proposal states that this definition should include geographical location data and other identifiers, such as cookies.

There is also a divided opinion as to the extension of coverage of COPPA, specifically the one covering teenagers. Privacy advocates are saying that Congress should include special protection for teens in order to broaden its privacy legislation. There are representatives from at least two states who proposed a more radical legislation. They would go as far as barring websites from tracking children while they are online.

In addition, the idea of a “web eraser” was again brought up. This is an older proposition, wherein businesses used to provide the mechanism for teens to erase their online tracks. With this, any personal information teenagers leave when they browse, especially in social networking sites, would be deleted once they log out.

At their age, teenagers usually commit the online mistake of giving too much personal information on the sites that they visit. They don’t know that these mistakes can haunt them months, or even years, later. The premise of a privacy advocate group is this: kids need more protection than they have right now.

The premise is simple; give people ads that they might actually consider. Imagine a dainty young woman into flowers, teacups, and all things cute and cuddly. If while on a beauty website, she encounters an ad for a protein shake that is guaranteed to put on fifteen percent more muscle in one week, she probably isn’t going to even think about clicking it. On the other end of the spectrum, if a muscle-bound college kid is managing his fantasy football team, and an ad for a miracle garden solution pops up, he probably won’t think twice before exiting it out.

These may be a bit extreme, but everyone has had something like this occur. One can see two sides of the coin to this new behavioral advertising; one is good and puts ads that you may actually consider on your screen, and another is bad and completely invades your privacy without permission.

While these invasive ads may seem to violate privacy laws, they actually don’t. The ISPs will allow them to do so on their customers because the ads will pay them a percentage of their profits. This still doesn’t quell the public’s concerns… someone is getting into their personal and private browsing history and compromising their anonymous browsing experience online. Although the people are outraged and concerned, there truly is little they can do.

Well, little they can do in the form of laws and regulations anyway. If you want to avoid these advertisers and their hands-on tactics, try using an anonymous proxy server. When you download your private proxy for just a few dollars a month, you will quickly see it was money well spent.

This useful piece of software actually changes your IP address, which will thwart any possible hackers or trackers, as your IP address is the key to any data you have on your computer. The best anonymous proxy servers will actually have an encryption service built right in, which can encode all of your Internet traffic so it looks like hieroglyphics to any snoopers.

This serves two purposes; first, it protects you from hackers and other criminal scum, and secondly, it scrambles all of your data so the behavioral advertisers can’t read any of it. If they can’t read it, they can’t try and forcefully solicit their products to you. An anonymous proxy is the perfect remedy for a situation that will plague the public for quite a while before somebody finally does something about it. Don’t let your ISP give away your information for a profit, secure your browsing with an anonymous proxy now and never let anyone in on your documents again.

While these ads are seen, who can be sure they are clicked on? Everyone has had an instance where an ad pops up on their web browser that has absolutely no interest to them. Let’s take the stock example of a stereotypical avatar of masculinity: this man loves football and all day meticulously surfs and updates his fantasy football page, making trades and offers. Then he heads over to ESPN and watches some online football to see how the players and teams are doing to decide where to take his team, then an ad pops up. The ad consists of a new flower product that “will make your garden bloom like never before.” After considering for a moment what the ad is, and asserting that “flower” has nothing to do with “pig skin”, the man would quickly exit out the pest and be on with his negotiations.

Things have changed recently though. When this man would get ads of flower products, sweet smelling detergent, and other emasculated items, it was a completely random affair. Now this same man might be seeing ads showing off awesome football strategies, or trying to sell an in-depth guide on all of the major players. While this seems like a good thing, it isn’t. The information is pulled right from your surfing, and without your knowledge.

Enter behavioral advertising. This new form of ads actually investigates your browsing history and other documents on your computer to form a keyword profile of what you like and are interested in, and then brings ads to you based on those investigations, and this is all involuntary. Privacy advocates are having fits over this, and the public are scared that their sensitive information will be compromised, and it won’t have even been their faults.

“Is it worth it” is their slogan, and they say that it isn’t worth having someone’s entire computer scanned just for more ads to be thrown at them. It also is involuntary, often an entire ISP (Internet Service Provider) signs up all of their customers for a portion of what the advertisers make. It is all about the money. That’s what these advertisers think; these tailor made ads will lure people into spending their hard earned money.

Just recently though, privacy advocates have been making some breakthroughs against the behavioral advertisers. They have actually recruited experts of the law, and have them backed into a corner. The advertisers say they will offer a opt-out policy, where people can call and “take themselves off of the list” of people to be scanned. This seems to have satisfied the public, but it is mostly a sham.

For one, the people have to call and deactivate themselves from the service, probably through a long, tedious process. Most people don’t want to put in the effort, or don’t have the time to do this stuff, and they shouldn’t have to. People shouldn’t have to ask to not have their privacy invaded, this a is ridiculous statement.

Then, the opt-out policies expire after a short time. It seems like five months is the agreed figure of consensus for these “take me off of the lists” to stay in effect. After that, you have to call again, and go through the boring process over again. Again, most people will forget about this, won’t have enough time, or will simply get too frustrated to keep doing it.

Research behavioral advertising and see its true risks. To fight back, try using an anonymous proxy’s encryption functions to really mess up the data the ads see; that will confuse them!

Although these places say they are all about the customer, one cannot sometimes always be fooled so. Many of these companies are coming out of the woodwork and coming into scandals regarding the privacy of their loyal consumer’s data.

When you sign up for these stores services and go to buy something, you are prompted to enter all sorts of data. At the time, it all seems to be for the good of expedited shipping, and other company related things. Even a credit card number is required, so that the seller may have access to his or her money.

Everybody is familiar with the stories of people getting swindled by false companies, or being tricked by an unreliable seller. This is not a big concern on the big selling sites, but there is another thing that is. They sell your private information to third party companies who then in turn try to sell you even more things.

These third party sites will pay a large sum of money for this data because they know that with data and browsing and buying histories, they will know your interests, and can market to you more effectively based on them. While this is helpful to the little sites because they make more money, and helpful to the big players because they get a cut of the money, it is bad for everyone’s privacy rights and status.

You don’t even have to be on one of these sites to get sold into (no pun intended) this technology. Programs called “behavioral advertisers” which are employed by your ISPs (Internet Service Providers) can, unbeknownst to you, search through your browsing history and find your interests; likes and dislikes. Once again, the behavioral advertisers profit from your sales, and the ISPs can take a small cut for releasing your information. It is a no-brainer for them, quick money for no work.

Unfortunately, this is often not even illegal. These buying websites often force you to give up many of your rights and privacy perks when you accept their terms of service agreements. The problem is, no one realizes this because everyone just blindly accepts the agreements without even a perusal over them. Every time you have to accept one of these agreements, always make sure to read it, or at least scan it for possible right surrendering that must be done. They usually aren’t worded in a confusing fashion, and it certainly won’t take a professional lawyer to understand what is going on.

Even though these rights are relinquished in the terms of service, it only takes one squeaky wheel to get something changed. If people were to complain to these sites, surely they would see change. In the meantime, be wary of these sites and if ads begin to pop up that you are actually interested in, someone could have just made a quick buck off of you.

One way to beat behavioral advertising is to use an anonymous proxy.  By using an anonymous proxy, your IP address changes so that the advertising program cannot tie your different Internet browsing sessions together to get a complete picture of your activities.  The key in using an anonymous proxy to avoid this tracking is to use one that has multiple server locations and multiple IP addresses.