Just goes to show that sometimes an asset you've fought for can be a bigger liability than you ever imagined. Forced by bankruptcy proceedings to sell off its assets, Toysmart executives planned to put its customer data up for sale. The attorneys general of 44 states agreed, filing a legal brief in bankruptcy court opposing it. But Toysrus didn't sell the data, it hired Coremetrics to analyze its customers' online behavior. This is the Web, where no one company does it all.
Third parties host servers, maintain sites, serve ads, sell ads, provide content and analyze data.
For once, a vendor's whiney defense is perfectly reasonable - which must be a first in the long, tawdry, mostly depressing history of how individual privacy is eroded on the Web. Whether a judge will agree remains to be seen. Then there's DoubleClick, a much juicier target for lawsuits and regulations when it comes to customer privacy. Empty Promises DoubleClick and eight other network advertisers promise to follow a set of self-regulatory guidelines that, they swear, will limit the way they collect and use customer data and allow users to opt out. That's nice, but somehow it fails to inspire much confidence.