Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple have heeded the Federal Trade Commission's call for an easy-to-use do-not-track mechanism and promised to offer browser-based headers. The headers, when activated by
users, communicate to Web sites that users don't want to be tracked.
What that term actually means, however, is open to debate. For now, some Web companies say do-not-track means only that a
consumer doesn't want to be subject to the kind of tracking done to facilitate online behavioral advertising. This definition encompasses gathering data about people's visits to unrelated sites in
order to deduce the types of products that users might want to purchase. But it doesn't necessarily preclude collecting a host of other data, including a publisher's collection of information about
pages viewed at its site, the search terms that brought people to its pages or IP addresses of visitors.
Consumers, however, appear to be taking a far broader view of do-not-track, according
to research by privacy expert Aleecia McDonald presented last week at a workshop of the World Wide Web Consortium. McDonald reported that
many people think do-not-track will eliminate a vast array of data collection.
Before the conference, McDonald conducted a preliminary study, still incomplete, of around 200 Web users. She
asked them what type of information they thought would be collected if they clicked on a do-not-track button. Almost 40% responded that activating do-not-track meant that nothing at all about their
Web use would be collected.
When asked how they would react if nothing changed after they clicked a do-not-track button, 51% said they wouldn't be surprised. Almost as many, 45%, said they
would blame the browser company.
McDonald proposes that one solution to the apparent discrepancy between users' expectations and those of Web companies lies in clearly defining the term and
then communicating that definition to users.
Whether that can happen remains to be seen.