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No matter how they behave I see it as impractical that these opt-outs are either based on account settings of signed in users or cookies set on signed-out users, so if you choose never to sign in and prefer not to accept, or to clear cookies after each session then you can't actually very well opt-out of anything. Its same issue with the ad industry behavioral advertising opt-out http://www.aboutads.info/choic... , useless if you clear cookies.

http://www.aboutads.info/ is the domain I found for Digital Advertising Alliance. Can anyone confirm?

Better yet, it seems that if you visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ with Privacy Badger enabled, it becomes a blacklist page for Privacy Badger. IOW, Privacy Badger will flag most of the sites on it as a possible site for third-party trackers, then block most of the sites when they're referenced from another site.

From some link-diving, it looks like they are going to honor the list these guys compile about people who are sick of seeing ads for things they've already bought.

I went to the Verizon Wireless privacy link and both lines (my wife's and mine) were already opted out. It is very possible that I has previously heard of this and changed my settings, though it was not done recently.

I tried to go to the " autoads" page, but I found that to opt out, I had to enable both javascript (no surprise) and cookies. Also, the opt out is shown as a beta tool, so even if I allow cookies and javascript, who knows if it will actually do anything. Hmmm.

""Some Windows apps include advertising. You may choose to opt out of personalized advertising by visiting choice.live.com.""

It's bull. It's a cookie for fuck's sake! You have to allow 3rd party cookies to avoid getting spammed.

http://www.aboutads.info/choices/

Like most people I know, I delete all cookies on exit on principle, so that won't work anyway.

Ed Bott says that Sarah Downey (Privacy Advocate) says that the IAB says that the IAB membership "will continue to monetize data".

Except that to become an IAB member, a company must comply to the IAB code of conduct, which includes the self-regulatory program for online behavioral targeting. This includes the requirement of providing a consumer choice mechanism, which has been implemented for the industry at www.aboutads.info.

I guess fact checking was too much for Ed...

The DAA is MUCH larger than just Google. http://www.aboutads.info/participating

Including:
Better Business Bureau
Association of the United States Army
AllState Insurance
Forbes
Microsoft (ironic)

Yeah, both the FTC guidelines and the current W3C DNT draft both state that users should opt-out of tracking, not opt-in. Furthermore, the advertizing industry groups like that have had the most successful with self-regulation efforts have flat-out said that while they will respect the user's chose to opt-out, they will ignore any system that opts users out automatically.

Microsoft's decision here is completely counter productive. At best, it means that sites will add code to ignore theDNT header if the UA is IE. At worst it will derail the entire process.

I think Microsoft's action here is simply intended to reduce Google's ad profits.

And you forgot one more argument: ad companies would not mind to respect an opt-in DNT program because users who cared to opt-in would be those few paranoid NoScript types who don't click on ads anyway. So following the DNT program would cost them nearly nothing, and would be good PR.
But thanks to Microsoft, any ad company who follows DNT will be losing serious money. Hopefully they will ignore DNT only when the UA is MSIE so the rest of people can still get DNT.

Yeah, both the FTC guidelines and the current W3C DNT draft both state that users should opt-out of tracking, not opt-in. Furthermore, the advertizing industry groups like that have had the most successful with self-regulation efforts have flat-out said that while they will respect the user's chose to opt-out, they will ignore any system that opts users out automatically.

Microsoft's decision here is completely counter productive. At best, it means that sites will add code to ignore theDNT header if the UA is IE. At worst it will derail the entire process.

I am not convinced that "opting out of behavioral advertising" is the same as "do not track". The page describing the opt-out initiative contains the following sentence:

In some cases, automated systems will continue to collect other data about browser visits but that data will no longer be used to deliver interest-based advertising to the user.

This suggests that tracking might still happen, but the ads served will not be based on the collected information if you opt out. That does not sound like much of an improvement in online privacy.