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Consumer Groups Advocate for 'Do Not Track' Registry
Posted by
Zonk
on Wed Apr 16, 2008 02:53 PM
from the it's-nice-to-dream dept.
from the it's-nice-to-dream dept.
eldavojohn writes "Consumer groups are asking for a 'do not track' registry to be implemented, similar to the successful and popular 'do not call' registry. Tracking companies are asking for examples where tracking has caused harm, and would rather the industry stay self-regulated. 'In December, the FTC approved Google's purchase of advertising rival DoubleClick over the objections of some privacy groups. At the same time, the agency urged advertisers to let computer users bar advertisers from collecting information on them, to provide "reasonable security" for any data and to collect data on health conditions or other sensitive issues only with the consumer's express consent.'"
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What's with all these registries? (Score:5, Interesting)
Something I really don't understand here is why ANY reasonable person would not opt-out of any of these systems? (Granted, only the first one is actually coded into law) And how do you enforce them for companies based outside the USA? And for that matter, what's to stop companies from outsourcing their tracking offshore to skirt the laws?
Where is the"your post advocates a..." for this?
Re:What's with all these registries? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah. Why not just create a "leave me the fsck alone" registry and be done with it.
Parent
Re:What's with all these registries? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What's with all these registries? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care if Google knows what websites I visit. Oooo! A single 29-year-old male goes to porn sites!! How EEEEEVIL of Google to know this!
Parent
No, I'm not going to see the ads. (Score:3, Insightful)
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If it weren't for interbutts advertising, all you'd find on the intertubes would be dry research material and 'HI THIS IS LARUENS [sic] HOMEPAGE AND HERE IS MY CAT PICTURES! HI THERE!@!! SIGN MAH GUEST BOOK~~~ MUAH~~~' type pages. Replete with spinning kitty paw gifs. And probably a few <marquee> tags.
We would not have rich internet news. Social news (e.g. digg and slashdot) wouldn't be viable. And forget free porn (outside of irc chatrooms run out of a basement in bulgaria to find
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I fail to see the problem...
Re:No, I'm not going to see the ads. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, those posts are irritating as hell. Please try to respond with original thoughts. Thank you.
Parent
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AdBlock just happens to be one method I use so I don't have to see ads. I mention it in passing, and you start frothing at the mouth and accusing me of being unoriginal. As if saying, "Hey, targeted a
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Re:No, I'm not going to see the ads. (Score:4, Funny)
Were you saying something? I use DoucheBlock, so I don't see these things.
Parent
Re:No, I'm not going to see the ads. (Score:5, Informative)
Advertising in Most first world countries is anti-happiness. As explained by Professor Richard Layard: [abc.net.au]
Parent
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When I want to purchase something, I research it...Advertising and marketing are a complete waste of human energy at best...
You're a fool if you think that in general, advertising is not valuable to both the buyer and the seller. That is how buyers find sellers. You couldn't even begin researching your purchase if there wasn't some form of advertising letting you know what options are out there.
The problem isn't that ads exist, it's that they need to be more relevant when they're displayed. Google seems to be making this their mission and for that reason, and right now I'm happy to let them track what websites I look at a
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When I want something, I will seek it out. I'm not a sheep, I don't need to be led to pasture and shown where to graze. I don't need people telling me what I should want.
When I want something, I'll ask, thanks, so shut the fuck up, I don't want to hear what you have for sale.
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If a company doesn't tell what they produce, the public doesn't know it's there.
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Except if you're doing it right, you're not going to see ads.
I do agree with your point, however. The fact that I don't see the ads is the exact reason this list is unnecessary. The government shouldn't be "helping out" when the people can do it themselves.
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By "moving to Facebook" I was inferring that economists are better off polishing their social interaction skills by attending to that website rather th
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Where is the "your post advocates a..." for this?
Right here! Although I haven't worked hard on the s/spam/tracking/ bit. Off we go:
Your article advocates a
(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting tracking. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may
have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal
law was passed.)
(X) Trackers can easily use it to harvest identities
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate ema
Nice Try (Score:3, Insightful)
but if you really dont want to be tracked, just turn off your cookies! (although there are ways to track without using them)
Re:Nice Try (Score:4, Interesting)
just turn off your cookies!
Ignoring for a moment the other ways to track me, I rather like being semi-permanently logged in to /. and a host of other sites. When I'm buying something, I don't want to have to go manually unblock the site so it can store my shopping cart data.
Does anyone know of a way to only block the "evil" cookies? I'd love something that blocked the tracking cookies, let the shopping cart ones through, and didn't require me to figure out which was which for each and every cookie.
Parent
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It won't eliminate tracking entirely, but my answer was to accept cookies from all sites, just for the duration of the session. Sites like Slashdot where I maintain an account have an exception in my Firefox cookie preferences which allows them to store cookies indefinitely. Shop
Do not call registry? (Score:2)
Those calls may theoretically be illegal, but the laws aren't enforced.
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More Opt-Out Registries (Score:4, Funny)
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Individually register to stay anonymous... (Score:5, Funny)
to stay identifiable during all your browsing so trackers know it is you.
You allow them to track you so they stop tracking you.
Soundy like a great idea?
Yeah, to me neither.
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1. All persons shall, by default, non-tracked persons.
2. Any person may request to be on the "tracked" list.
This goes for phone marketers and spammers.
Would you like to sign up to be tracked or spammed? Be my guest.
(This can be solved through technology. I'm working on it.)
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How do you "not track" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm probably not fully understanding, but how do you track people, but allow someone to "opt out". What I mean is, let's say you don't want DoubleClick to track you. So for them to abide by a "do not track" list, they need to set up some kind of identifier so that, when you visit a site where they would normally track you, they recognize it's you and stop tracking you. But that means you'd have to send them that identifier in every instance where they would track you, and they'd end up having to track you to make sure they don't track you.
I suppose they could just not store the collecting information, though. And no, I didn't RTFA.
Re:How do you "not track" (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx [doubleclick.com]
The catch being that if you do clear your cookies, you'll have to re-set the opt out cookie as well.
If you care, here's the URL to opt-out of the other big ad network:
http://www.atlassolutions.com/optout.aspx [atlassolutions.com]
I don't have all of them, but Doubleclick and Atlas cover something like 75-80% of the market.
Easiest way to opt out (Score:3, Informative)
Wouldn't it be smarter to just block the ads? (Score:4, Insightful)
Cookies (Score:5, Funny)
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That certainly explains both the Cookie Crook and the Cookie Monster.
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Considering... (Score:2)
I wonder how this will be received...
And if they (the trackers) said they would comply, would you believe them?
How About a LMA Registry? (Score:2)
How are you going to identify people? (Score:2)
Better than CAN-SPAM? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting how despite telcos like AT&T declaring they're going to police the Internet for copyright violation, and otherwise snoop content and traffic as they please, they don't seem to be implementing network spam filters, like with do-not-spam registries. Even though that would be very popular with users, and give the telcos each an excuse to get our contact lists, "to use as whitelists" (or whatever else they want).
There really should be a major push to enforce protecting our privacy. Every email system should operate with a whitelist by default, so only people you add (and maybe people on their whitelist) can get through to you. What would work even better would be micropayments to the recipient for each email they receive, with payments waived (or charged back in bulk or net) for those on the whitelist. Make the micropayments settable by the user (and variable even in the whitelist). Then spammers could pay me to spam me, if they can afford it, and I can make money off being spammed if I set the micropayments low enough. My associates will get to me for free, and new associates can pay to get my attention, then get it refunded if I accept their new contact (and then put them on the whitelist).
Otherwise the noise in our messaging systems really degrade their high value, and inhibit our making using them second nature. Just like what would have happened to the telephone if it were as cheap for telemarketers to annoy us as it is for them to spam us.
oxymoron? (Score:3, Insightful)
A "do not track" ... registry? Is this a late April fool's day joke? It sounds like it could backfire. Wouldn't it mean that websites that track at all would be LEGALLY REQUIRED to obtain some piece of identifying information about you to check against the registry? And how could you prove a violation? Wouldn't it still pretty much rely on "self-regulation"?
As an aside, I used to work in a marketing department that had separate "do not call", "do not mail", and "do not email" flags for all their customers. Our group's policy (I can't speak for the whole company) was that if any of those flags were set, we wouldn't put them on any kind of contact list. I think the decision was still based on economics -- they figured the benefit of marketing to a few more people was outweighed by the risk of angering those people: "I'm sorry, sir, I see that you asked not to be mailed or emailed any more offers, but you didn't say we couldn't CALL you!"
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In order to not be tracked, one would have to be
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