Consumer advocates want Do Not Track anti-cookie registry

by Brad Linder Apr 17th 2008

You know the federal Do Not Call registry that lets US telephone customers sign up for a list to avoid telemarketers? Two consumer advocacy groups are asking the Federal Trade Commission to basically create the same kind of registry -- for the internet.

Now, let's pretend that a US agency could regulate the way that internet companies track your data for advertising and other purposes. How exactly would that work? One way would be for the the FTC would have to require every advertising firm and web site that's accessible in the US to use a potentially enormous list of consumers to figure which computers they can place cookies on and which computers they cannot.

Or the burden could be placed on consumers to sign up for a service like the Network Advertising Initiative, which places its own cookie on your computer to alert over a dozen major advertisers that you have chosen to opt-out of targeted ads. But if you happen to clean out your cookies accidentally, you'll need to reinstall the software. or if you happen across a page from a company that hasn't signed on, you could still be tracked.

We're not saying that consumers shouldn't be able to opt out of targeted advertising. We're just saying that the people asking for federal regulation seem to be either incredibly ambitious or they lack a basic understanding of how the internet works.

[via Techdirt and CNet]

Tags: advertising, cookies, opt-out, targeted advertising, TargetedAdvertising

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Todd said 3:53PM on 4-17-2008

Yeah, simple under standing of FireFox browser settings are way more reasonable alternative to Federal legislation, true. But I wonder as we enter the Android era, there something to this overly zealous intent for a "Do not track". I was reading this paper from MIT about their project called "Seridipity" where your mobile phone is turned into a data collection device. It uses cell tower triangulation and Bluetooth to, in their words, "predict your location with a 90% accuracy, before you get there..." and "...will look for people with similar behavior and send each a message for them to seek each other out..". Android can do all that and more, and Google is being kind secretive with that part of the development process. Read the 2004 paper here:

http://reality.media.mit.edu

In addition to MIT's "reality mining" and Android/Gphone, there's Dodgeball and the newly launched Bright Kite ( http://brightkite.com ) too. I wonder if the people screaming for Federal legislation for simple cookies even know about any of these.

Rususeruru said 7:02PM on 4-17-2008

Simple solution to all that gPhone nonsense... turn it off, leave it at home.

James said 4:00PM on 4-17-2008

This would be much simpler to implement as an RFC, which could later be mandated by law. That is, the RFC that defines how cookies work could be expanded to carry metadata about the cookies that identifies tracking cookies in a unique way, then consumer web browsers could decide whether or not to keep/honor those cookies. Sort of like the idea behind .xxx domains, only less controversial -- require that American companies simply follow a certain convention, and let the technology handle the rest.

They would build on the existing "cookie RFCs":
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2109.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2964.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2965.txt

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