By Kevin McCauley
The Federal Trade Commission today released a preliminary draft report calling for a "do not track" mechanism for the Internet to allow consumers to prevent marketers from tracking their viewing habits on the web and other personal data in a bid to better target advertising.
The idea mimics the "do not call" registry for telephones.
According to the FTC, the "do not track" option is a way to "balance the privacy interests of consumers with innovation that relies on consumer information to develop beneficial new products and services."
Said a statement from FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz: "Technological and business ingenuity have spawned a whole new online culture and vocabulary – email, IMs, apps and blogs – that consumers have come to expect and enjoy. The FTC wants to help ensure that the growing, changing, thriving information marketplace is built on a framework that promotes privacy, transparency, business innovation and consumer choice. We believe that’s what most Americans want as well."
Leibowitz has testified in Congress earlier this year about how "do not track" is a tool to provide consumers control over data collection.
The FTC criticized marketers, ad agencies and retailers for not coming up with a self-regulatory scheme that would protect privacy. The report says industry efforts to address privacy through self-regulation "have been too slow, and up to now have failed to provide adequate and meaningful protection."
The FTC does not have the authority to put a "do not track" system in place. The report is "intended to inform policymakers, including Congress, as they develop solutions, policies, and potential laws governing privacy, and guide and motivate industry as it develops more robust and effective best practices and self-regulatory guidelines."
Congress has been debating a simple universal measure to allow people to "opt out’ of being tracked online.
The FTC has now opened a two-month comment period on the report called "Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: A Proposed Framework for Businesses and Policymakers."
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