Do Not Track | featured news

The two-year-old drive to give consumers a simple way to block companies from tracking their behavior as they move across the Internet has faltered, say participants in the process who are struggling to reconcile privacy concerns with an advertising model that pays for many free Internet services.

Advertisers are girding for battle against browser mechanisms intended to offer more online privacy. At stake is nothing less than the future of the surveillance economy.

Last Thursday, Microsoft announced several new features to the upcoming IE10, which will launch as part of Windows 8. One of these features, which turns on “Do Not Track” by default, has caused quite a stir over the weekend as new outlets and bloggers have discussed the potential benefits and ramifications of this feature.

U.S. regulators pushed Internet companies on Monday to adopt a "Do Not Track" system that would give consumers more control over their personal data online, and asked Congress to pass privacy legislation.

The bill would prohibit companies from tracking children on the Internet without parental consent, restrict marketing to minors and allow parents to erase kids' personal information.

Although it lacks a 'do not track' provision, the bill's advocates say it would enact the first comprehensive protections for consumers' digital data transmitted from computers or other devices.Internet privacy is shaping up as the consumer issue of the year in Congress, as evidenced by new legislation introduced with bipartisan support from two former presidential candidates.

Federal regulators are proposing to create a "Do Not Track" tool for the Internet so that people could prevent marketers from tracking their Web browsing habits and other online behavior in order to target advertising....