Even this amount of information collection would not trouble most people. DoubleClick can use the cookies to track a particular computer’s connections to Web sites, but it does not record any identity information about the owner of that computer. Therefore, DoubleClick accumulates a considerable record of Web activity, but cannot connect that activity with a person.
In 1999, DoubleClick arranged a $1.7 billion merger with Abacus Direct Corporation. Abacus had developed a way to link information about people’s Web behavior (collected through cookies such as those placed by DoubleClick’s banner ad servers) to the names, addresses, and other information about those people that had been collected in an offline consumer database.