FTC Privacy Report Advocates Do-Not-Track list

[Harold Mansfield]

We have debated the amount of privacy we have online many times, and how much entities like Google use our information to track out behavior and consumer patterns.

I thought some of you would find this article interesting.


The Federal Trade Commission has released a long-anticipated report recommending steps Web companies and advertisers can take to protect consumer privacy, appealing to the industry to develop a "do-not-track" registry for consumers to opt out of behavioral targeting systems.

FTC Privacy Report Advocates 'Do-Not-Track' List - www.esecurityplanet.com (http://www.esecurityplanet.com/news/article.php/3915251/FTC-Privacy-Report-Advocates-Do-Not-Track-List.htm)

And by the way (for our SEO discussions), this is a great example of how to build backlinks. When you write compelling and informative or even entertaining content, sooner or later someone is going to link to you by sharing it with others.

I actually found this on Twitter while retweeting something completely different.

[vangogh]

I've seen the news, though haven't read deeply into things yet. One of my first questions was how would this really work. Most anything you would try to add to a do-not-track list isn't quite unique or static like a phone number. IPs change all the time. I think the idea of cookies was used, but people clear those. I like the idea of a do not track list. Just not sure how it's going to work in practice.

[Harold Mansfield]

I don't know. I was watching a CNBC special the other day where the CEO's of Infosys and another company touched on it. They are feverishly trying to develop an application that would make sense and work.
There's a lot of money in it for whoever cracks the code to this one, or they may just legislate something that requires companies to only gather information when given permission, or make a complete opt out available or be in violation of some kind of privacy law.

[vangogh]

I think it would be great if they could come up with something. It seems like it would have to be cookies or maybe it gets tied to the same kind of serial numbers they use to register software. Except this would need to be more for the person than the specific computer. Hard to see how they'll make it work, but then again if I could see it I'd be one of the people working on a solution. I'll gladly leave it to the experts.