Slashdot Mirror
Is Online Privacy Getting Better?
jeffy124 writes: "It appears marketers are finding that there's little value in stockpiling the personal info of web users. Either that or they're responding to the negative feedback of users. In a survey of 400 commercial websites, when compared with figures from a 2000 FTC study, more sites have more prominent and explanatory privacy policies, less carry third-party cookies, less collect personal info, and more use opt-in collection. The study was performed by the Progress & Freedom Foundation, and the full report can be found here." Note that the Progress & Freedom Foundation is an industry-sponsored group which generally favors a non-regulated online marketplace.
IMO, this is one of the good things about IE6... I already liked the fact that it has SOME features in this field... the fact that it is causing other businesses to stand up and take notice is a definite bonus. Good privacy policies benefit us all. (Course, we already KNEW that, but the point is businesses are realising this.)
Course, (and this will probably prompt some to spend some valuable mod points) I've had nothing but great experiences with IE6... the fact that it has a 'delete cookies' button was the first addition I noticed, and liked. IE6 is a really good browser, at least for the better part. Nothing's perfect, as we all know, but IMO, finally Microsoft's starting to get there with their browser.
(Yes, Mozilla has good features in this regard too. But Mozilla often crashes on my system. This is not Pro-IE Anti-Moz. I like Mozilla too. In this case, I just HAPPEN to prefer IE.) (sees more people using their mod points to silence this one ^_^)
I'd also like to note that I de-integrated IE from Windows... so my main thing is - hopefully they'll make Windows run as nice.
Just my $0.02CDN.