Ad industry-supported versions of the self-regulatory Do Not Track program...
Ad industry-supported versions of the self-regulatory Do Not Track program still collect data on Internet users’ activities, but limit targeted ads, TechFreedom President Berin Szoka said Friday during a BroadbandUS.TV webcast. “For the versions that the advertising industry has indicated…
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any willingness to go with, there’s no limits on collection from before,” he said. “The difference is that … the ad frequency and the ad specificity get turned down. But the collection of data, at least according to the industry, stays the same.” As the Digital Advertising Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium have worked on setting the standards for the program, they have been operating under different definitions of what “tracking” means and thus have different expectations of what the program will accomplish, said Szoka. As the FTC has waded into Internet privacy issues in recent years, it has sought to strike a balance between protecting consumers’ privacy and still giving them the ability to enjoy the Internet’s benefits, said Deborah Matties, aide to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. It has also sought to address these issues by having industry players self-regulate and develop common standards they will all abide by, she said. “I think we're pretty optimistic that the process is moving forward in a good way, and we think that we will have something if not this year, then sometime early next year."