The World Wide Web Consortium must come up with a...

said. When activated, the setting sends a signal to visited sites and other entities present on those websites that the user doesn’t want to be tracked, it said. But the W3C still hasn’t agreed on DNT, including on what “tracking” actually means and what it covers, IAB said. Both organizations agree there should be three “states” of DNT -- “on,” “off” and “not set” -- which resemble the accepted settings for cookies, IAB said. Despite the lack of an agreed standard, the advertising industry is strongly committed to interoperability between DNT and IAB Europe’s online behavioral advertising self-regulatory framework, it said. Some activities using anonymous and aggregated data need to be excluded from DNT, where it’s not about tracking individuals, said Patrick Marck, IAB Belgium general manager and chairman of IAB Europe’s Web analytics committee. With such critical issues not yet resolved, interpreting a DNT setting “would require looking into a crystal ball,” he said. Companies can’t rely on the current DNT signals, he said. The e-privacy directive wants users and subscribers to be given clear, comprehensive information in order to exercise their choice about tracking, he said. Without that information, the DNT signal has no meaning because it doesn’t let users make an informed decision, and it’s also likely users don’t understand what DNT means, he said.