The 'do not track' list has been proposed by privacy
and electronic rights groups the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) and Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) to the US
consumer protection regulator the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC).
Consumers would be able to sign up to the list so that their
online activities would not be monitored by advertisers and used to
target adverts to their specific tastes and habits.
"The collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of personal
and behavioural information for marketing purposes is a threat to
consumers’ privacy rights," says the document sent to the FTC.
"The expansion of behavioural tracking and targeting of
consumers through the internet and other networked devices greatly
exacerbates the failures of the current inadequate structure for
addressing consumer privacy interests," it said. "This expansion
threatens privacy in new ways that consumers are largely unaware
of."
The FTC has been holding a conference all week on the issues
raised by tracking technology and advertising, and it was in order
to influence those debates that the proposals have been
published.
The list would allow consumers to opt out of being tracked by
websites and advertised to on the basis of their online activities.
Opponents have pointed out that consumers can do this on their own
by blocking the cookies of sites that track their behaviour.
Randall Rothenberg is the chief executive of the Interactive
Advertising Bureau (IAB), the US trade body for internet
advertising. In a blog posting written at the FTC's conference, he
said: "Of what concern is it, if the data collected are anonymous
and aggregated and used to create more relevant – and thus more
user-friendly – advertising?"
In his speech to the conference he said: "Government must be
prudent in ensuring that no regulation is drawn that would curtail
interactive advertising’s potential to continue to support this
extraordinary pattern of innovation and consumer benefit."
"Advertising is the economic foundation underlying the dynamism
of the Interactive Era. With interactive media, it’s become a
commonplace that marketing spend – one of the last redoubts of
imprecision in American business – is becoming more accountable and
more productive. This is possible because of the availability of
mathematical and technological tools that enable the analysis of
non-personally-identifiable data to detect patterns in peoples’
interests and consumption habits, and to allow the matching of
advertisements to their needs."
The EFF and CDT proposal says that users should be provided with
information held about them on request. It also proposes the
establishment of a body to protect internet users, the Online
Consumer Protection Advisory Committee.
"The advisory committee would hold regular meetings to evaluate
changes in the advertising and consumer marketing sector, including
but not limited to new technologies and other changes impacting
consumers. The committee would review detailed audit reports from
advertisers and industry, and would report problems and suggest
solutions to the FTC. The committee would have the ability to hold
hearings, and to report its findings to Congress, the FTC, and the
public," it said.
