The Simple Solution to Tracking and Privacy Concerns in Advertising

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Didn't Opera have such configurable info a few years ago when the browser was still displaying ads? They stopped doing it, I guess the advertisers weren't happy with it, or too many people entered fictional info that never matched the advertisers' targeting prefs (99 years old granny from Azerbaijan...).

I never heard of that but it could certainly be possible.

They added the banners in 2000 and removed them in September 2005 - to give you an idea about the time I am referring to. If anyone's curious, they can probably still download version 8.0 or so from sites such as cnet.com (but beware the crapware installers they use there).

I actually tracked down a version of Opera 5 (from 2000) and installed it in a VM, here's a screenshot of the ad preferences: http://666kb.com/i/c69ez5xf671f79fk4.png

As you can see, it's more or less what the article suggests. Opera gave up on the idea after 5 years - but then again the (worse) feeling of being tracked by everyone and everything didn't exist back then.

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