Microsoft Wins Congressional Backing For Do-Not-Track Default In IE10

An anonymous reader writes "Thought Do Not Track was strictly a geeks' issue? Think again. After Microsoft was slapped down for enabling DNT by default in Internet Explorer 10, the co-chairs of the US's Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus have sent a strongly-worded letter to the W3C urging it to reconsider. As webdev360.com points out, it's an interesting (unprecedented?) example of Congress interacting with the standards body: 'Whether members of the [working group] will take kindly to the Representatives' interference remains to be seen. Ed Markey's legislative director, Joseph Wender, has brought the letter to the attention of the group's mailing list, but, as of the time of writing, he hasn't received any replies.'"

Comments

Increase in tracking

[another random user]

Think this ties in well with another story from a bit earlier: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/06/20/0421210/cnet-idc-find-rapid-increase-in-behavioral-data-tracking

Do Not Track, Do No Evil, they're all the same.

[Anonymous Coward]

While I applaud MS for their privacy efforts, I am cynical, and I largely see this as a marketing move on their behalf. They've seen how Google has copped some flak over privacy concerns, and it's obvious they want to position themselves as the privacy-respecting alternative. But I have no doubt that if Bing and Microsoft's cloud services become as popular as Google's, they will mine every last bit of data they can get their hands on.

They're all as bad as each other, says I.