EFF Announces New ‘Do Not Track’ Standard for Web Browsing
The Electronic Frontier Foundation partnered with privacy company Disconnect and a coalition of Internet companies to create a “stronger” Do Not Track (DNT) policy for Web browsing. It better protects users from sites that try to “secretly follow and record”…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Internet activity and incentivizes advertisers and data collection companies to respect a user’s choice to not be tracked, EFF said in a news release Monday. EFF and Disconnect partnered with the publishing site Medium, analytics service Mixpanel, ad- and tracker-blocking extension AdBlock, and search engine DuckDuckGo, it said. The new DNT setting is not an ad or tracker block, but works in tandem with those technologies, EFF said. “These companies understand that clear and fair practices around analytics and advertising are essential not only for privacy but for the future of online commerce,” said EFF Chief Computer Scientist Peter Eckersley. EFF is pleased so many Web services are committed to give users a “clear opt-out from stealthy online tracking and the exploitation of their reading history,” Eckersley said. “The failure of the ad industry and privacy groups to reach a compromise on DNT has led to a viral surge in ad blocking, massive losses for Internet companies dependent on ad revenue, and increasingly malicious methods of tracking users and surfacing advertisements online,” said Disconnect CEO Casey Oppenheim: “Our hope is that this new DNT approach will protect a consumer’s right to privacy and incentivize advertisers to respect user choice, paving a path that allows privacy and advertising to coexist.”