Commentary

Microsoft Will Offer Do-Not-Track In Browser

by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer, December 7, 2010

Last week the Federal Trade Commission called on companies to find a way to offer consumers the ability to opt out of online ad tracking. Today, Microsoft took a significant step toward answering that call.

The company just announced that its next version of Internet Explorer will offer do-not-track functionality in its browser.

To accomplish this, IE9 will replace the current InPrivate Filtering feature with a no-tracking function that will allow users to input a "blacklist" of servers. The browser then will refuse to put through calls to those servers by the Web site the user has navigated to.

The browser itself wouldn't compile the blacklist. Rather, consumers could pick and choose from a variety of potential lists. Presumably these could include compilations developed by industry groups -- which might be comprised of servers that don't comply with self-regulatory principles -- as well as ones developed by privacy advocates, which potentially could include all ad networks that engage in third-party tracking.

Already some industry observers are waxing enthusiastic about the upcoming offering. Privacy expert and security researcher Chris Soghoian calls it "a great, pro-privacy and strategically savvy move on Microsoft's part."

But, he warns, ad networks could try to find workarounds by "further embracing alias subdomains and other sneaky techniques."

Jules Polonetsky, co-chair and director of the think tank Future of Privacy Forum, also said the new feature seems to answer regulators' recent call for the industry to develop do-not-track functionality. "It should more than satisfy the FTC," Polonetsky says. "It's enormously powerful -- far more powerful than the industry would like."

However, he adds, people still must enable the feature and then obtain a blacklist -- which few average Web users appear likely to do.

behavioral targeting, privacy

4 comments about "Microsoft Will Offer Do-Not-Track In Browser".

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Bruce May from Bizperity, December 7, 2010 at 8:19 p.m.
I recently remarked that few are upset about online tracking because they can't even tell that it's working and the truth is that it's not working very well. That will change. When it does consumers will get upset only to the extent that it is perceived as being "creepy". For example, if you feed me an add based on a comment I make on a social network, I would indeed feel like someone was creeping around my personal life. The point is that online tracking can be spared the full brunt of consumer push back to the extent that it can avoid the "creep" factor. Much of the tracking technology that is coming online will be largely transparent to the consumer and unlikely to induce the creep factor. A good benchmark for this is the intrusion people experience when they receive unsolicited telemarketing phone calls. The no-call lists include the majority of consumers (as high as 70%). The equivalent "no-tracking" list is not likely to reach that level, as long as ad networks can avoid the creep factor.
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Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, December 7, 2010 at 9:26 p.m.

At what point does the line cross and how do you stop it once the creepy creeps in ? Do you assume all are honest or care what you think or want ?

David Trahan from Mr Youth, December 7, 2010 at 11:29 p.m.

What a well-placed slap to Google. Microsoft doesn't rely on the tracking that Google does. Google wants to own all the data they can, so Microsoft should take the opposite approach.

In my opinion, data capture will provide endless utility to consumer in the near futue (even more than now) as it become more wide-spread and the Googles of the world find ways to get it all and cross reference it all. Not all consumer want that, so someone needs to give them that option. I'm looking at you Microsoft.

David Pavlicko from AVISPL, December 9, 2010 at 4:06 p.m.

I think Microsoft is smarter than they appear here.

Pretty much everyone in the industry knows that 95% (or more, probably) of the internet users couldn't care less that their browsing behavior on websites - Do we not remember that Google also provides an 'analytics opt-out' for users as well? http://blog.webanalyticsdemystified.com/weblog/2010/03/why-google-is-really-offering-an-opt-out.html

But what happens when the govt mandates that user behavior is no longer able to be tracked? Well, pretty much every business on the internet is gonna get screwed.

How do you tell if someone is spamming your site if you can't identify that person?

How do internet marketers present actual data to back up their numbers and show the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the campaigns they run? It's pretty darn easy now - take away visitor stats and you're back to counting page views and speculating.

In case someone thinks I'm completely anti-consumer - I'm not at all: I'm all for giving consumers/users 'options' to opt-out of tracking. (in fact, they're already out there) I'm just curious why they aren't using them? Could it be this is all an overblown issue to begin with?