Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., left, and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz, right, confer at the start of a meeting on the new Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, COPPA, which regulates Internet websites that collect information from children under the age of thirteen, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., left, and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz, right, confer at the start of a meeting on the new Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, COPPA, which regulates Internet websites that collect information from children under the age of thirteen, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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This handout image provided by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shows the cover of the FTC's “Mobile Apps for Kids: Disclosures Still Not Making the Grade" guide. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating an unspecified number of software companies that make cellphone apps to determine whether they have violated the privacy rights of children by quietly collecting personal information from their phones then sharing it with advertisers and data brokers, the agency said Monday. Such apps can capture a child's physical location, phone numbers of their friends and more. (AP Photo/FTC)
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Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Jon Leibowitz speaks during a news conference at FTC in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, to announce that Google is agreeing to license certain patents to mobile phone rivals and stop a practice of including snippets from other websites in its search results as part of a settlement to end a 19-month investigation in the search leader's business practices. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
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This Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, photo shows a Google sign at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Google is pledging to license hundreds of key patents to mobile computing rivals under more reasonable terms and to curb the use of snippets from other websites in Internet search results in a settlement that ends a high-profile antitrust probe. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
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Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Jon Leibowitz gestures as he speaks during a news conference at FTC in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, to announce that Google is agreeing to license certain patents to mobile phone rivals and stop a practice of including snippets from other websites in its search results as part of a settlement to end a 19-month investigation in the search leader's business practices. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
FTC settles 'history sniffing' charges with Epic
Online advertising company Epic Marketplace Inc. and its parent Epic Media Group LLC have agreed to stop using "history sniffing" to review millions of consumers' Internet habits, according to a settlement announced Tuesday with the
Federal Trade Commission.
History sniffing allows online operators to test specific sites in an Internet browser to determine if users have visited those sites in the past. Companies can then use that data to better target their ads.
The FTC filed a complaint in December saying Epic put history-sniffing code in advertisements it served to visitors on thousands of websites within the Epic Marketplace network, including cnn.com, papajohns.com and orbitz.com.
The code allowed Epic to determine whether consumers had visited any of over 54,000 domains, including pages relating to sensitive medical and financial issues. Those issues ranged from fertility and incontinence to debt relief and personal bankruptcy.
With the data, Epic was able to determine which sites consumers visited that were outside its network, information it would not have otherwise been able to get, according to the complaint. Epic also misled consumers by not disclosing that it was collecting this information, the FTC said.
Epic is required under the settlement to delete and destroy all data collected using the technology.
The FTC said history sniffing circumvents the most common and widely known method consumers use to prevent online tracking: deleting cookies. Deleting cookies does not prevent a website from querying a consumer's browsing history. Major browser vendors, however, began implementing protections against history sniffing starting in 2010.
Epic's history sniffing came to light in July 2011, when researchers at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School uncovered the practice, according to the FTC.
The settlement order also bars misrepresentations about the extent to which the companies maintain the privacy or confidentiality of data from or about a particular consumer, computer or device. That includes misrepresentations of how that data is collected, used, disclosed or shared. It also bars misrepresentations about the extent to which software code on a webpage determines whether a user has previously visited a website.
Violations of the order could lead to penalties of up to $16,000 per violation.
Epic could not be reached for comment.
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