Privacy Groups Mull 'Do Not Track' List for Internet

Technical Writing Geek writes with a Reuters story about a collection of privacy groups looking to set up a 'Do Not Track' list online, similar to the 'Do Not Call' list meant to dissuade telemarketing. "Computer users should be notified when their Web surfing is tracked by online advertisers and Web publishers, argue the Consumer Federation of America, the World Privacy Forum and the Center for Democracy and Technology, among other groups in a coalition promoting the idea. Rather than burying privacy policies in fine print, companies should also disclose them more fully and provide easier ways to opt out, the groups said. The organizations submitted the proposals to the Federal Trade Commission, ahead of the consumer watchdog agency's workshop on Nov. 1-2 to study the increasing use of tracking technology to target online ads.

Comments

Re:unrealistic goals

[morgan_greywolf]

Agreed. Completely unrealistic. If you want to opt out of being tracked by advertisers, here are the only steps you need to perform:

• Download Firefox
• Install the Adblock Plus and NoScript extensions
• T
  
• Go to Edit | Preferences or Tools | Options (depending on platform) and go to the Privacy tab. Uncheck 'Accept cookies from sites'.
  
• Click Exceptions. Add in all the sites that you use that need cookies to work right (online banking, Slashdot, etc.)

Tada! You're done. Now you can't be tracked (unless you specifically want to be).

on a "do not spam" list

[khallow]

The largest lesson in emal spamming has been that they'll send spam to anything resembling an email. They don't care where it came from or how and why they got it. So as I see it the only value of a "do not spam" list is that it will contain a lot of active email addresses. That is gold to spammers and I think anyone who believes such a list will reduce spamming (rather than have the opposite effect) is sorely deluded.

How do they know it's you?

[argent]

Cookies don't work, they'd have to be set for each site. IP address doesn't work, they change and are shared. And what exactly is it people are worried about in the first place? That's what I don't get here... how is your privacy being violated if they don't know who you are?

If this is limited to advertising to people who are customers... that is, people who have some kind of relationship that would allow them to be identified... that would work. But it doesn't sound like that's what people are concerned about...

Re:unrealistic goals

[mdm-adph]

My friend, I had kinda the same problem as you did (having to maintain a huge whilelist with NoScript) -- that's why, on the first tab of the configuration window, you'll see an option for "Allow Top-Level Sites by Default." No more keeping track of a huge whitelist.

Now, any site you go to will automatically allow JavaScript from that domain (I mean, if you didn't want its JavaScript running on your machine, what are you going there for?). Any other domain's scripts that are present on that page will still not run, and I'm sure that you'll find that 90-95% of the time those extra scripts are ads and tracker scripts.

Doing the whitelist thing (having to manually allow every domain's JavaScript every time you go to a new site) will eventually bite you in the ass -- after about a year of using NoScript, my whitelist had grown so large that every site I visited had a noticable 4-5 second pause, which was literally just NoScript checking through the huge whitelist!

Re:you still are using word "mull" in wrong contec

[Chris Mattern]

You are a special, unique individual, and that's a great thing. Unfortunately, you also have a special, unique definition of "mull", and that's not working out so well.

Chris Mattern

Tried and failed

[uigrad_2000]

There is already a policy like this, called P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences Project).

P3P lets a create a all-encompassing privacy plan for their browser, and only websites that comply with particular levels of user privacy, and sign their sites as doing so, are able to set and read cookies in the way that the user specifies. The standard was created by W3C, and even had support initially from IE and Mozilla.

The code for P3P in Mozilla sat untouched from 2003 until 2007, so they turned it off for a few releases to see if anyone would notice. When no one complained, they finally yanked it out of the firefox and seamonkey trunks.

The vast majority of websites are never going to file one of these documents, since it is just a bunch of paperwork, and a setup for a lawsuit against yourself.

My questions not answered by this article are:

1. What does this new system have that P3P does not?
2. Why is the FTC involved? Does the government have to control every aspect of our lives?
3. Who is actually going to trust every website out there to abide by these controls? A company that signs and promises not to abuse your data, and then asks for extra privileges are the most likely to abuse it.
4. If a website does abuse data that they promised not to, how will they be caught? Will they be tried in court as criminals? Copyright infringers are tried as criminals and we all know how that turned out.

The Do not call registry works because it is tied phone numbers, which are static for users, and are the only gateway for phone communication between a user and a solicitor. There is no such vehicle for the internet. If the U.S. government wants to assign web browsing IDs for all users, then it could work. If that ever happens, I'm moving to Cambodia.