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FTC Proposes Do Not Track List For the Web
An anonymous reader writes "The Federal Trade Commission proposed allowing consumers to opt out of having their online activities tracked on Wednesday as part of the agency's preliminary report on consumer privacy. FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz said he would prefer for the makers of popular web browsers to come up with a setting on their own that would allow consumers to opt out of having their browsing and search habits tracked."
It should be opt-in.
I'm all for a standard GUI for doing so, but the "other side" (those who do the tracking) must also cooperate by actually observing the setting (no matter how it should be delivered to them; perhaps via HTTP header). If observing it would be mandatory, then hooray; otherwise, meh.
spammers! Brilliant, thank you FTC!
the TSA should implement a "do not molest" list.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It's not possible unless you limit valid uses of technologies such as cookies, too. But if some sort of a law were introduced requiring those who do the tracking to observe your setting, then it'd be possible; they'd simply have to ignore your request for their "tracking service" if you supply a header such as "X-DNT: True".
P3P
In my personal experience, the FTC's Do Not Call list has actually worked pretty well. I used to get considerable numbers of telemarketing calls every night, but about 6 months after adding all my numbers to the list, they've almost completely stopped. And on the very, very rare occasion that I do get one, a quick mention that this number is on the Federal Do Not Call list sends them into a near panic state, scrambling to hang up.
My brain's a little slow today... how would this work? How would this be enforced? Since when can websites tell exactly who we are (which I am assuming will be required to verify that the user is or is not on the list)?
As someone else has already noted, this only works if the website you are visiting is willing to abide by those policies. Do Not Call list is one thing-those calls usually originate from companies that are based in the US (even if the call center is not), and it is also fairly easy to realize if someone has called you in violation of this list. It is more difficult for a website. How do they expect to enforce this on a website owned by a company that is not US? In addition, its a lot harder to tell if a website has tracked you. Those who know how to check if they are being tracked know enough to block the tracking, and don't need this list in the first place.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
I have a land line (it comes over my cable connection) because we only have one mobile phone and use the 400 minutes as our long distance service thus it's cheaper for us to have family call us on the land line. Aside from the handful of calls we get from family the rest of the time it's from scammers "trying to lower your interest rate on your credit card," who hang up when you press them for who they are or companies who do not follow the DNC list.
These companies know they have little chance of being prosecuted under the law so I end up with numerous phone calls and fights with supervisors of these companies to not call me again. Yet they keep trying to sell newspaper subscriptions and rug cleanings to me.
So after three phone calls from one company I finally get enough information to file a complaint with the FCC. I submit that complaint and it's rejected three different times for lack of information. While the FCC agent attempts to be helpful the entire process is cumbersome and difficult. I lack any confidence the calls will stop or the company will pay and even if they do the fine will be minimal and they'll just consider it the cost of doing business.
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So back to this particular new trend. Yeah, great, no more tracking online. It's a lot easier for me to block that stuff online while still enjoying a relatively easy browsing experience than it is for me to stop calls from ringing my phone which would include turning the ringer off (no, I'm not paying for call block or caller ID).
If the government wants to do this, and I'd love them to, they need to ensure that the laws, policies and enforcement are viable and actually benefit people rather than creating a whole new useless bureaucracy which spends money and doesn't accomplish a damn thing.
Koreans typically don't tend to care quite as much about tracking Americans' browsing to advertise at them. Most websites most Americans visit are owned and operated by American companies, as it turns out.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Besides the simple fact that there currently isn't a good way to implement an opt-out database (yet) and doing so on a national level between several websites would be a nearly impossible nightmare, you also have to consider the fact that:
1) There is no good way to enforce this as the legal boundaries end at our borders. There wouldn't be much to stop offshore data collection.
2) The most harmful types of data collection are those people that do it for malicious purposes like phishing. I really don't think a US law is going to stop them anyways.
-also-
3) What constitutes "tracking?" There are web aps and addons that track your usage of a page for simple things like counting the number of visitors, or much more complex things like demographic account collection to tune web ads to best suit you. There are also versions that do this that don't permanently record your information and just go on a session-by-session basis. If you even have the capability of differentiating what tracking is occurring (which is nearly impossible in the first place) where does the line get drawn?
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
I came here to say this. Me: "Don't track me." Them: "Thanks for visiting our website! In order to know whether or not we should track you, please tell us who you are." In order for this to work, the web would have to abandon any pretense of anonymity. Which do you think is the lesser of two evils? I know where my vote goes.
I'll second this. In addition, the Direct Marketing Association and pre-approved credit card opt-outs have worked very well. I get almost zero junk mail. See this for details: World Privacy Forum's Top Ten Opt Outs
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I suspect this list would also be used be used by various agencies to flag people who are engaged in "undesireable" activity. "Only those with something to hide will be using the Do Not Track" feature.
*sigh*
This all at the same time that they are requiring ISP's to keep 2 year records of IP logs.
So how does this new "Do Not Track" bill merge with the other bill. I presume that everyone will just sign up under the 2 year bill and say "we need to keep records" and are thus exempt from the DoNotTrack feature.
The Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth (SAFETY) Act of 2009 also known as H.R. 1076 and S.436 would require providers of "electronic communication or remote computing services" to "retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user."[22]
In my personal experience, the FTC's Do Not Call list has actually worked pretty well.
That's because a personal phone call from a live human costs alot and anyone who uses this method must target it's customer base very well to be cost-effective. In turn, it's almost certainly a US business, operating on US soil, and care about the FTC. If they violate the DNC list, you incur a high cost, and are likely to do something about it, like report them.
No so on the Internets. Tracking is 100% automatic, and non-intrusive. Only a minority of the sites doing the tracking are from your country (this is true most everywhere except maybe US). If they feel the local law is too restrictive, the add-farm can always reincorporate in the Solomon Isles, with no impact on the user experience. The vast majority of users don't care if they're being watched, so don't hold your breath for a regulatory solution.
The economics of the issue say a "do not track" list is going even less effective the a "do not spam list". A passive DNT browser setting (ex. a meta tag) will be ignored, and an active one will incur a cost for the user - it's extremely hard, even for the informed user, to discern among, say login and tracking cookies. Again, the economic pressue means that the add-farm with the best tracking can make the most money, and you can bet they will fight to stay competitive and track the users.
What's different about this is that telemarketers who call you already know who you are: they have your phone number. The only way a web site would be able to comply with a Do No Track database is for you to identify yourself unambiguously to them, information they do not have, and which would not be safe to hand over, unsecured, to any web site that asks for it.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
A while back I worked on what was going to be a local newspaper's first website, so I got to learn a bit about their business. Their 'dirty little secret' was that, while the newspaper could rightly say that their free paper reached over 95% of all households in the county, and that the actual readership was quite high (IIRC something like 70%), they _never_ publicized the probability that an ad on Page X would be seen by anybody. The probability was very close to zero, except for certain specialties like the front of the weekly car ads section, and parts of the classifieds. They actually had some numbers, such as what percentage of households actually opened the paper, actually looked at the first page of the sport section, etc. But none of that was given to the advertisers.
Web tracking has changed the old saying "I know I'm wasting 1/2 of my advertising money - I just don't know which half!", possibly forever.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/