Independent Researcher & Consultant
A panel of experts discussed the current state of “Do Not Track” efforts. I focused on the technical difficulty of blocking tracking and ways to ensure consumers have a choice. You can read more about my thoughts on DNT here.
I was on a similar panel two years ago where we discussed whether Congressional action was necessary to ensure consumers opt-out of tracking.
Watch the panel here. My remarks start at 14:30.
[hulu http://www.hulu.com/watch/306513 thumbnail_frame=15]
Earlier this month, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) met face-to-face in California to discuss Do Not Track standards, and there’s a lot of concern about whether the group will to meet their self-imposed July deadline. Do Not Track has been getting attention from the media again after the recent re-introduction of the legislation, mostly focused on the controversy it provokes, whether it’s necessary given the upcoming browser modifications, or how unlikely it is to pass Congress. In fact, I will be participating in a panel hosted by the Congressional Internet Caucus titled “Enabling Do Not Track Privacy: Is It Dead or Alive?“, which will be broadcast on CSPAN today. (Watch it here.)
The conversation about tracking isn’t new. Exactly thirteen years ago the very same set of stakeholders were debating the very same set of issues: privacy, 3rd party cookies, and what tracking defaults should be. In fact, if you didn’t notice the date of the article (07/21/2000), you might confuse it for breaking news. Many of the players cited in that article are the same you’d see quoted today (here’s looking at you Microsoft, Doubleclick, Mozilla (Netscape), National Advertising Initiative, and EPIC), and we seem no closer to developing comprehensive standards for online tracking than we were 13 years ago. It can get discouraging. [Read more…]
I prepared a short position paper for the first W3C Workshop on Web Tracking and User Privacy on March 24, 2011.
I argue that the current proposals for allowing users to opt-out of tracking (which amount to either “do not collect/retain” or “do not use to target ads”) are not workable. I propose a third option focused primarily on the active removal of persistent identifiers that are used to correlate browsing activity over multiple sessions or multiple websites, allowing collecting data in de-identified form.
Ashkan Soltani