No Cookies, No Tracking

You’re probably familiar with the Do Not Call List, that way of making sure you avoid annoying calls from telemarketers. A group is now proposing something similar to protect online users.   Nine privacy groups – the Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of America, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Privacy Activism, Public Information Research, Privacy Journal, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and World Privacy Forum – have asked the Federal Trade Commission today to start  a "Do Not Track List." Its aim is to protect consumers from having their online activities unknowingly tracked, stored, and used by marketers and advertising networks.   It’s one of several consumer protection initiatives the group has asked the FTC to adopt in an attempt for users to keep control of their personal information.   The Do Not Track List would insist on advertising entities that place tracking technologies on consumers’ computers registering all the domain names of the servers involved in such activities with the FTC. Browser application developers would be encouraged to create plug-ins that let users download the Do Not Track list to their computers. Having the list accessible through a browser application would allow users to prevent any site from tracking behavioral data.   "If you look back at the Do Not Call list, it was at one time managed by industry. But it didn’t gain widespread acceptance until the FTC took it over," said Pam Dixon, Executive Director of the World Privacy Forum. "The industry has had seven years to prove they can manage online opt-outs. It is time to move toward something structured like the Do Not Call list to address the problems we are seeing, and have now seen for seven years."