The New York Times is running a really funny story, but with serious implications, at the moment. It concerns how the online advertising targets particular groups of people using site tracking technology. Apparently, if you have AIDS, cancer or suffer from an erectile dysfunction then your movements will not be tracked in order to throw related advertising in your direction wherever you go. However, if you are dead then expect to be inundated with ads.

You can also expect to be targeted if you suffer from heart failure, warts and Parkinson’s disease – although not all at the same time one has to assume.

It all comes as part of a new Network Advertising Initiative proposal to distinguish between diseases when it comes to advertising, and specifically the behavioral targeting of users for advertising purposes.

It seems that it is an attempt at self-regulation in order to head off government mandates which could impose stricter rules following a Federal Trade Commission report last year. Let’s see what dead people have to say about that shall we…