Last month the FTC held a two-day meeting on behavioral advertising. It's something you're going to be hearing a lot more about next year, given the growing number of companies using network monitoring hardware to track your activity -- all in an effort to bring you ads more tailored to your interests (and generate a revenue stream for ISPs).

These FTC get-togethers are frequently sparse when it comes to consumer advocates, but the few in attendance urged the FTC to create a "do not track" list aimed at protecting your privacy. In the hopes of keeping any new privacy regulation at bay (aka protecting their advertising revenue), both AOL and Google quickly announced new efforts aimed at "educating" users on the benefits of targeted advertising.

In other words they sent a message telling the FTC to let them self-regulate. The FTC is listening. On the heels of approving Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, the agency has crafted a set of non-binding "principles" to "guide the development of self-regulation in this evolving area." All the principles read like the sort of common sense items you'd hope companies are already doing (protecting your stored data, being clear about customer privacy.Of course it's the FTC's job to ensure advertisers and ISPs are protecting privacy, not just suggest the reasonable course of action. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, calls the FTC's decision to approve the deal a "privacy time bomb."