Digital marketing company PulsePoint has agreed to settle charges by the acting New Jersey attorney general and the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs that it bypassed consumers’ privacy settings in Safari browsers, The New York Times reports. The company allegedly used cookies to bypass settings that are designed to block targeted ads. Acting New Jersey Attorney General John J. Hoffman said, “This settlement puts online advertisers on notice that they must respect consumers’ privacy settings, or end up paying far more in penalties than any violations would generate in ad revenue.” Another provision of the settlement requires PulsePoint to post its data collection practices on its website. A company spokeswoman said PulsePoint took “user privacy very seriously” and that the cookies in question had been “primarily limited to technical purposes such as fraud detection” and not for targeted ads. (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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