February 7, 2011 – Tracking security and privacy issues are in every headline you read these days. Firefox started the buzz with their announcement of a “do not track” tool that empowers consumers to comprehensively request not to be followed wherever you visit on the Web. This came from a Federal Trade Commission request.
This popular topic is being discussed everywhere, but our inspiration came from USA Today’s article, “What new privacy features in Chrome, Firefox and IE9 really do.”
Google recently released Keep My Opt-Outs, a new Chrome browser privacy feature, but it doesn’t appear to be as inclusive and holistic as Firefox’s effort, or even Microsoft’s soon-to-be-released version. And having said that, Firefox engineers haven’t nailed this yet either. It still relies basically on the honor system, much like the “remove me from your list” link at the bottom of every spam email. And we all know how well that works.
So, where does that leave users who want to stop ad networks from systematically “stalking” you? I guess that is a rhetorical question.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
