Adzilla Quietly Settles Class-Action Lawsuit

About a year ago, I wrote about the class-action lawsuit involving Adzilla. Last week, Media Post reported:

"A privacy lawsuit against behavioral targeting company Adzilla and its partners was quietly settled late last month, according to court records. Adzilla, which stopped operating in the U.S. in 2008, did not acknowledge any wrongdoing as part of the settlement... Adzilla agreed that it will "require opt-in consent of consumers or any consent that may be required to avoid violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act" should it resume ISP-based targeting in the U.S."

Readers of this blog know that I am a proponent of opt-in systems; to require behavioral advertising companies to clearly notify and inform consumers first and to only collect data about consumers after gaining explicit, prior consent via a conspicuous online opt-in mechanism. Several Internet service providers abused consumers' rights by collecting data without notice and without gaining prior consent.

Unfortunately:

"The settlement leaves unresolved whether it's legal to target Web users based on data purchased from Internet service providers."