The tinfoil hat-wearing crowd loves to make hay about Big Brother tracking your every move. While some of their claims are a little outlandish, there is past history out there of companies doing some pretty shady things. That is about to change.
After attempting to fight it off for the better part of the year, web companies including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL, working with the Obama Administration(Opens in a new window), are now agreeing to abide by new Do Not Track (DNT) technologies to be built into browsers. This will put some strict (although not necessarily comprehensive) polices on what companies can track you on.
Gone are tracking cookies that customize ads based on the websites you visit, and the data collected can no longer be used for purposes other than advertising. This means companies in the healthcare, employment, and credit industries will not be able to purchase this data to make business decisions. The Federal Trade Commission will add some regulatory oomph, just to make sure these companies follow the rules.
Companies like Facebook would get a pass, allowing their sharing features to continue to work. Law enforcement would also have the right to peer into companies tracking data, and the companies collecting data can use it for research and product development, the US Administration says.
Tracking has become a hot-button issue as of late. Google has consistently been in hot water over its own use of tracking cookies, including just this past week when it was caught circumventing Safari's privacy settings to install tracking code(Opens in a new window). The news set off a firestorm of criticism against the company, and spurred additional scrutiny from regulators.
But this goes far beyond Google -- as early as 2000, DoubleClick was using similar tracking cookies(Opens in a new window), following your every move in order to serve you better advertisements. Ironically, DoubleClick is now owned by Google: the two merged in 2007(Opens in a new window).
Obviously, not everyone's going to trust that the government has everything under control, and will be working in our best interest. For those of you that still prefer to wear the tinfoil hat, downloading an add-on for your browser like Collusion for Firefox is certainly an option. This particular app will show you how you're being tracked. Other programs like Spybot Search & Destroy(Opens in a new window) will also detect and remove these types of cookies.
Bottom line here is this: if you are really worried about having your online travails be tracked, take matters into your own hands and foil the efforts of evil Big Brother. Don't wait for the government to fix the tracking issue or enforce rules against it. Personal responsibility is key.
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