• Financial Times, Friday, July 3, 2009 10:13 AM

Privacy advocates are giving lukewarm support to a set of self-regulatory principles to govern the use of behavioral targeting by advertisers. Four trade groups issued the regulations yesterday following a warning from the Federal Trade Commission that it would act if the industry did not attempt to control how websites and advertisers collect and use personal data, Richard Water reports.

The guidelines call for Internet companies to draw users' attention to how their data are being collected, and offer them a chance to opt out. They also state that Internet service providers should not be able to collect information on users' browsing habits without specific consent.

"There has been a lot of talk about this for years," says Alissa Cooper at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "Now we'll see how well [advertisers] actually implement it." But the CDT would still prefer to see a broader privacy law enacted. The FTC called the self-regulation move "a good first step."

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