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Consumer Groups Advocate for 'Do Not Track' Registry
eldavojohn writes "Consumer groups are asking for a 'do not track' registry to be implemented, similar to the successful and popular 'do not call' registry. Tracking companies are asking for examples where tracking has caused harm, and would rather the industry stay self-regulated. 'In December, the FTC approved Google's purchase of advertising rival DoubleClick over the objections of some privacy groups. At the same time, the agency urged advertisers to let computer users bar advertisers from collecting information on them, to provide "reasonable security" for any data and to collect data on health conditions or other sensitive issues only with the consumer's express consent.'"
Do Not Call, Do Not E-mail, and now Do Not Track?
Something I really don't understand here is why ANY reasonable person would not opt-out of any of these systems? (Granted, only the first one is actually coded into law) And how do you enforce them for companies based outside the USA? And for that matter, what's to stop companies from outsourcing their tracking offshore to skirt the laws?
Where is the"your post advocates a..." for this?
Plus TOR.
something like this would be impossible to enforce, and the data collection is almost always transparent to the user.
but if you really dont want to be tracked, just turn off your cookies! (although there are ways to track without using them)
Those calls may theoretically be illegal, but the laws aren't enforced.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Oh yeah... where do I sign up for the "Do Not Spam" registry?
What a great concept - for trackers: You individually register and have
to stay identifiable during all your browsing so trackers know it is you.
You allow them to track you so they stop tracking you.
Soundy like a great idea?
Yeah, to me neither.
I'm probably not fully understanding, but how do you track people, but allow someone to "opt out". What I mean is, let's say you don't want DoubleClick to track you. So for them to abide by a "do not track" list, they need to set up some kind of identifier so that, when you visit a site where they would normally track you, they recognize it's you and stop tracking you. But that means you'd have to send them that identifier in every instance where they would track you, and they'd end up having to track you to make sure they don't track you.
I suppose they could just not store the collecting information, though. And no, I didn't RTFA.
Get firefox, Noscript, and adblock plus. Block all the tracking websites! I have "google-analitics.com" (it's frightening how many websites have this embedded, even those without ads) "googlesyndication" "doubleclick" and lots of other on my "untrusted" list. Makes me 20% less paranoid.
Wouldn't it be smarter to just block the ads instead? To prevent such cookies from touching one's computer?
When you outlaw cookies, only outlaws will have cookies..... yum delicious cookies
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
In order to sign up for the 'Do Not Track' registry, you'll need to provide your name, address, phone number, SSN, mother's maiden name, and the names of all the porn sites you regularly visit. Without this information, we cannot guarantee your privacy.
That use of adblock has been called "immoral" http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/11/157256/
I wonder how this will be received...
And if they (the trackers) said they would comply, would you believe them?
Wouldn't I have to put down quite a lot of detail on the register just to enable companies to figure out whether they are supposed to avoid tracking me?
Worse, it'd be doing the hardest bit - connecting the dots.
I use adblock and filterset.g. Even when there are ads on the page, I tune them out. When I want to purchase something, I research it. I don't need to have it shoved in my face. Advertising and marketing are a complete waste of human energy at best, evil mind control black magic at worst. I don't want to watch chickens being sacrificed to dark gods, I don't inject raw sewage straight into my brain, and I don't look at advertising.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
How about a Leave Me Alone Registry that registers you to all these other registries?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The only problem with a do-not-track registry is that it is almost impossible to work with. I mean, you will be creating a list of what, exactly, that somehow a server will have to access, how, that will somehow have a web application to optionally not use cookies? Or somehow not use real e-mail addresses in its database? To some extent, for a lot of web stuff to work, you have to track users activities.
This is my sig.
Judging from how much more spam I get since the CAN-SPAM law supposedly outlawed it, I don't think these online registries do anything but register a high-value contact address. The Do-Not-Call list is different, because the telcos control the calls, and there's a lot more legal precedent (teeth) in counterattacking harassing phonecalls.
It's interesting how despite telcos like AT&T declaring they're going to police the Internet for copyright violation, and otherwise snoop content and traffic as they please, they don't seem to be implementing network spam filters, like with do-not-spam registries. Even though that would be very popular with users, and give the telcos each an excuse to get our contact lists, "to use as whitelists" (or whatever else they want).
There really should be a major push to enforce protecting our privacy. Every email system should operate with a whitelist by default, so only people you add (and maybe people on their whitelist) can get through to you. What would work even better would be micropayments to the recipient for each email they receive, with payments waived (or charged back in bulk or net) for those on the whitelist. Make the micropayments settable by the user (and variable even in the whitelist). Then spammers could pay me to spam me, if they can afford it, and I can make money off being spammed if I set the micropayments low enough. My associates will get to me for free, and new associates can pay to get my attention, then get it refunded if I accept their new contact (and then put them on the whitelist).
Otherwise the noise in our messaging systems really degrade their high value, and inhibit our making using them second nature. Just like what would have happened to the telephone if it were as cheap for telemarketers to annoy us as it is for them to spam us.
--
make install -not war
Good luck with that.
Signed, nigerian scammers and chinese spammers.
That's weird, I googled adblock immoral slashdot and it gave me the link (first hit), which I copied and pasted into the post.
If you search those words on slashdot, the link come up too... and everything looks right
A "do not track" ... registry? Is this a late April fool's day joke? It sounds like it could backfire. Wouldn't it mean that websites that track at all would be LEGALLY REQUIRED to obtain some piece of identifying information about you to check against the registry? And how could you prove a violation? Wouldn't it still pretty much rely on "self-regulation"?
As an aside, I used to work in a marketing department that had separate "do not call", "do not mail", and "do not email" flags for all their customers. Our group's policy (I can't speak for the whole company) was that if any of those flags were set, we wouldn't put them on any kind of contact list. I think the decision was still based on economics -- they figured the benefit of marketing to a few more people was outweighed by the risk of angering those people: "I'm sorry, sir, I see that you asked not to be mailed or emailed any more offers, but you didn't say we couldn't CALL you!"
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Why don't browsers and email clients simply have a 'Do not Track' option? Each request would send the 'do not track' flag. Better yet, make it part of the HTML protocol. Whatever the solution is, it should work more like robots.txt that the "do not call list". Tracking.txt could have the sites you want to track you. You should have to opt in, not out. Of course, get ready to start paying for everything on the internet. No tracking == No profit. Unless of course you are actually making money the old fashion way, by providing a tangible product and you are just using the internet as a modern day Sears catalog. POP ... Bye-bye bubble!
Endless gov't tracking, yet another infringement on our rights by the gov't. Add it to the ever-growing list of violations:
They violate the 1st Amendment by opening mail, caging demonstrators and banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon.
They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns during Katrina.
They violate the 4th Amendment by conducting warrant-less wiretaps.
They violate the 5th and 6th Amendment by suspending habeas corpus.
They violate the 8th Amendment by torturing.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting 2 illegal wars based on lies and on behalf of a foriegn gov't.
Impeach them all and save this great country.
Last link (unless Google Books caves to the gov't and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)
irony (n.)- compiling a huge database of people's names and demographic data, to prevent said compilation.
I use the NoScript FireFox addon. I am surprised at how many popular sites are using tracking scripts (and how many scripts they are using).
-Skeeterbug
Is it a pretty effective solution?
I have all that installed along with an ABP filterset subscription, but other than me manually blocking Google analytics and syndication as untrusted, how effective is trusting those two solutions to block tracking?
Or do you really have to go nuts and setup manual ABP blocks for tracking vendor(s)?
I could care less about Google passively tracking my site browsing to deliver me targeted ads for a legitimate business purpose. What I do care about is the government tracking my law abiding behavior for no reason other than the illusion of protecting the children, public, or me from myself. As a law abiding citizen, I want the freedom to opt out of government spying, and data mining, about my life, which they can use it for any purpose of their choosing.
This one's been discussed before.
Does anyone know of a way to only block the "evil" cookies?
Just use the FORCE, Luke . . .
This won't work with spam as we all know since most spam is already sent illegally. I do wish they had this for regular mail though. That is so much trash just being handed out. How all junk mail isn't opt-in I do not know. Email is at least paperless.
A "Do Not Track" registry is an especially dumb idea. Aside from the obvious ideological inconsistency -- registering yourself with every advertiser so they know not to track you, there's also the fact that most people dislike ads because they are irrelevant to what they're looking for (i.e. not targeted). "I don't care how much you think I can lower my mortgage -- I already have a good rate."
Instead, why not have a law that says you can collect and track all you want, but you can't resell that info? I think that's what everyone's concerned about (i.e. privacy). You're already passively giving this information away to a web page when you visit and interact with it -- so there's nothing magic/evil about them using that info to serve you relevant / targeted ads. What is unethical is for them to take that information they know about you and sell it to someone else. I think that's where the real privacy concern comes in, because all it takes is for someone to pay "teh Goog" a shedload of money and they can buy the personal info of millions of people. Make selling the info illegal, not using the information internally.
How can they know not to track you unless they know it's you. Ergo, they have to track in order not to track. Why not just outlaw tracking altogether, since that's the outright effect of this proposed ban.
How about making tracking, bulk email, internet marketing, telemarketing calls, junk mail, surveys, political and non-profit canvassing, RFID, automatic software updates, census polls and the phone book all "opt-in" under penalty of death?
If you use firefox, you can block third party cookies. Close to 100% of the "evil" cookies are third party cookies. And third party cookies are never used for legitimate purposes (not that I've seen).
Just set this key:
"network.cookie.cookieBehavior" 1
Sites can get around this by doing a trick with frames. However, in practice, they never do this, and this technique works nearly 100%, and has no inconveniences beyond setting the key once.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
What're some actual examples of tracking that these privacy groups are complaining about? The article certainly doesn't provide any details. I mean, yeah, Doubleclick leaves a cookie on my computer and some ads use my IP to determine my general location, but is that really what everyone is so worried about?
I have firefox ask me about cookies and I usually select "Allow for this session only" for most websites, so carts work but they don't recognize me when I return. For sites that require login (and that I will return to) I allow the cookie to be stored permanently. I also reject cookies from domains that have something with "Ad" in them, eitehr in the domainname or cookie-name.
I also have installed NoScript and only allow as much JavaScript as necessary to get the site working. I specifically don't allow JS for other domains other than the original site, so that keeps out a lot of external ads and tracking code.
None of these "lists" get at the heart of the problem: greedy, selfish, unscrupulous corporations (people).
These are all stop gap problems. Next, when we have brain-mail, they'll start spamming that. And we'll need a new "list" for the same problem in a different format. We need to stop treating the symptom of the problem.
What we ought to do is discorporate any company that behaves like this, confiscate 100% of their corporate assets - donate them to schools - and imprison their executive members. Fines are not sufficient, they're merely treated as a cost of doing business.
If we were to do this consistently to every corporation that misbehaved badly, we would soon have a nation of very well behaved corporations would we not?
Question everything