EFF et al. to Call for Do-Not-Track List
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and a number of other organizations will hold a press conference tomorrow calling for the creation of a national "Do-Not-Track" list, according to a report today in AdvertisingAge. While on face the creation of a method of opting-out of browser history and other tracking seems reasonable, as Steve Rubel points out - this is just the first shot in the coming Behavioral Tracking Wars.
Railing against cookies is back in style. The Whois system of publicly available records about who owns any particular website is under attack for privacy reasons.
In the vast richness that is the open web, personalization and recommendation are two of the most powerful areas of opportunity for all of us - advertisers included but also every user of the web. Having the opportunity to opt-out is good, especially on a case-by-case basis, but the Behavior Tracking Wars should not drive us into an online Dark Ages any more than it should bring about a Minority Report dystopia of ubiquitous tracking.
While vendors serving those of us who love information are moving to respect our desire to have control over our own aggregate data, this blogger fears that moves like this latest by the EFF run the risk of forcing the software vendors we interact with to let our data run down the drain unused. If you don't want vendors to control your data that makes perfect sense, but insisting that it not even be captured in the first place does not.
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this is a tough one I think, especially for the likes of google and microsoft. I know I hate being tracked but usually like the services I get in trade. It seems this is a growing concern though, "Clear Google Search History to Maintain Your Privacy" it the one of the top 10 posts on my blog for years now...and it keeps increasing in popularity.
Unfortunately, without some legal protections, most surfers will not have much control of their own personal data. The speculations today about Facebook's ad network are particularly disturbing. Like many people, I don't want third parties to build behavioral dossiers on me that I can never access, correct, or limit. Unlike most typical surfers, I know enough to fend for myself by purging cookies daily, changing IP address almost that often, and segregate my online life so that no one company has too much.
@Google Tutor - I think you've expressed an appropriate ambivalence very succinctly.
@Logical - I don't know what kind of crazy stuff you're up to that you feel it's necessary to purge that regularly to avoid automated advertisements in favor of bulk ad delivery - but commenting on a widely read blog might in your case be inadvisable. I'm just saying :) Seriously, though, I do think it's about being able to - as you put well - access, correct, or limit those dossiers. That's where I'd like to see the bulk of this public energy put, not in blocking data collection in the first place.
@Marshall, your quote:
"If you don't want vendors to control your data that makes perfect sense, but insisting that it not even be captured in the first place does not."
If you cannot prevent your data from being captured, then you do not control it, do you?
A company to watch in this space is Demoxi. I recently backed the company via a recapitalization. The company has 11 years of operating history and 50+ issued patents in the field of identity management. The public beta of the Demoxi desktop application starts November 7 and includes extensive counter-measures for privacy protection. One piece of research that we uncovered in a recent nationally representative of consumers is that nearly 50% of the population does not visit certain sites due to fear that they will be tracked in a way that is personally identifying. That statistic blew me away.
@Marshall, if one always practices good security and privacy, one never needs to think about it. It's easy to set up and takes little effort, e.g., all cookies (except those I explicitly want, like my bank) are automatically deleted when the browser quits.
As Pascal hints, I'm not willing to wait for external controls. I'll control my data now by withholding it (until there is an acceptable system - we've learned the hard way that once it's out there, it's too late). I'm not doing anything illegal, unethical, or immoral (I don't even pirate music), I just believe very strongly in the individual right to personal privacy.