FOR RELEASE CONTACT: Thursday, February 10, 2000 EPIC FILES FTC COMPLAINT AGAINST DOUBLECLICK, ALLEGES "DECEPTIVE AND UNFAIR TRADE PRACTICES" IN ONLINE DATA COLLECTION Washington, DC -- The Electronic Privacy Information Center today filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission concerning the information collection practices of DoubleClick Inc., a leading Internet advertising firm, and its business partners. The complaint alleges that DoubleClick is unlawfully tracking the online activities of Internet users and combining surfing records with detailed personal profiles contained in a national marketing database. EPIC is asking the FTC to investigate the practices of the company, to destroy all records wrongfully obtained, to invoke civil penalties, and to enjoin the firm from violating the Federal Trade Commission Act. The EPIC complaint follows the merger of Doubleclick and Abacus Direct, the country's largest catalog database firm. Doubleclick has announced its intention to combine anonymous Internet profiles in the Doubleclick database with the personal information contained in the Abacus database. EPIC's complaint alleges that the DoubleClick merger of the two databases violates the companies' assurances that the information it collects on Internet users would remain anonymous, and that the data collection was therefore unfair and deceptive. EPIC also charges that the company has failed to follow its revised privacy policy and that this is also unfair. Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of EPIC, said "This complaint against Doubleclick is a critical test of the current state of privacy protection in the United States. We are looking to the Federal Trade Commission to see whether companies that break their promises and collect personal information in an unfair and deceptive manner will be held accountable." David Sobel, EPIC's General Counsel, said that "today's complaint raises fundamental issues involving electronic commerce." He noted that "much of the information collection that occurs on the Internet is invisible to the consumer, which raises serious questions of fairness and informed consent." The Electronic Privacy Information Center is a public interest research organization in Washington, DC. EPIC's activities include the review of governmental and private sector policies and practices to determine their possible impacts on individual privacy interests. The text of EPIC's complaint against DoubleClick is available online at: http://www.epic.org/privacy/internet/ftc/DCLK_complaint.pdf- 30 - .