FTC Sanctions Ad Network For History Sniffing

In December, an FTC order barred Epic Marketplace, Inc. from continuing a practice known as history sniffing. The technology employed by the company allowed them to track sensitive information including certain medical and financial information for millions of consumers. According to the terms of the settlement, the company must cease those practices and destroy any information collected previously and, upon FTC request, submit to auditing of data collection practices, consumer data complaints, and the company''s terms of use agreements for three years. The settlement also bars Epic Marketplace from making future misrepresentations regarding the collection of such information.

Epic Marketplace is a large advertising network with connections to more than 45,000 websites. Consumers who visited these sites received a cookie, which stored information about their online practices including sites they visited and the ads they viewed. Epic''s privacy policy only disclosed