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FTC Proposes Do Not Track List For the Web

Posted by samzenpus on from the don't-follow dept.

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."

5 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Booooo!! by mweather · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It should be opt-in.

  2. Standard GUI? by ivucica · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. It's called P3P by mysidia · · Score: 5, Informative

    P3P

    The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P) enables Websites to express their privacy practices in a standard format that can be retrieved automatically and interpreted easily by user agents. P3P user agents will allow users to be informed of site practices (in both machine- and human-readable formats) and to automate decision-making based on these practices when appropriate. Thus users need not read the privacy policies at every site they visit.

  4. Re:*sigh* by TheRealFixer · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. how would it work by penguinbroker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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)?