• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 6, 2011

Quantcast will start distributing the you-are-being-tracked icons to free to small publishers that work with the company and have behavioral targeting revenues of less than $2 million and total revenues of less than $15 million.

The icon, licensed by the Digital Advertising Alliance, is aimed at notifying consumers about behavioral targeting. Users who click on it are taken to a site where they can learn about online tracking and opt out of receiving ads based on their Web-surfing history.

Since launching last year, the DAA has signed up more than 70 ad networks, along with several ad agencies, big brand marketers and publishers.

The program is the centerpiece of the industry's effort to convince Congress and regulators that no new rules are needed to protect users' privacy. But several proposals under consideration would go further than the self-regulatory guidelines.

The Federal Trade Commission has called for online ad companies to offer consumers a way to opt out of online data collection through a single mechanism. Legislation proposed by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Commerce Committee, would also require ad networks to honor consumers' requests to avoid online tracking.

The self-regulatory principles, however, only require ad networks and other companies involved in behavioral targeting to stop serving ads based on users' Web-surfing data, while allowing companies to continue to track users who have opted out.