Behavioral targeting crusaders at the [URL=http://democraticmedia.org/]Center for Digital Democracy[/URL] have joined with two other consumer advocates, [URL=http://www.uspirg.org/]U.S. PIRG[/URL], and the [URL=http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/]World Privacy Forum[/URL], on demanding that the FTC look into what they contend are growing privacy threats to consumers from the rise of ad exchanges. Among the companies cited in the [URL=http://democraticmedia.org/files/u1/20100407-FTCfiling.pdf]32-page complaint[/URL] (PDF) are Google ([URL=http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTE&Ticker=GOOG]NSDQ: GOOG[/URL]), Yahoo ([URL=http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTE&Ticker=YHOO]NSDQ: YHOO[/URL]), PubMatic, TARGUSinfo, MediaMath, eXelate, Rubicon Project, AppNexus, and Rocket Fuel.

The complaint claims that the industry’s self-policing regime doesn’t work and it wants to FTC to step and regulate the way consumers’ data is collected and sold through the ad exchanges and other real-time bidding platforms. ([URL=http://paidcontent.org/article/419-trio-of-consumer-advocates-press-ftc-to-investigate-ad-exchanges/?asid=03cabdde]MORE[/URL])