Consumer Groups Advocate for 'Do Not Track' Registry

eldavojohn writes "Consumer groups are asking for a 'do not track' registry to be implemented, similar to the successful and popular 'do not call' registry. Tracking companies are asking for examples where tracking has caused harm, and would rather the industry stay self-regulated. 'In December, the FTC approved Google's purchase of advertising rival DoubleClick over the objections of some privacy groups. At the same time, the agency urged advertisers to let computer users bar advertisers from collecting information on them, to provide "reasonable security" for any data and to collect data on health conditions or other sensitive issues only with the consumer's express consent.'"

What's with all these registries?

Do Not Call, Do Not E-mail, and now Do Not Track?

Something I really don't understand here is why ANY reasonable person would not opt-out of any of these systems? (Granted, only the first one is actually coded into law) And how do you enforce them for companies based outside the USA? And for that matter, what's to stop companies from outsourcing their tracking offshore to skirt the laws?

Where is the"your post advocates a..." for this?

Re:What's with all these registries?

"What's with all these registries?"

Yeah. Why not just create a "leave me the fsck alone" registry and be done with it.

Re:What's with all these registries?

Just what I want. A database with my personal information that people can access to see if the personal information they already have should be used... How would this be policed world wide? What would stop someone who is already breaking 500 laws from ripping THAT info and using it? At the very least they would have to provide SOME sort of validation, and that alone scares me.

Re:What's with all these registries?

You're going to see the ads anyway, why not see ads targeted towards products you're interested in?

I don't care if Google knows what websites I visit. Oooo! A single 29-year-old male goes to porn sites!! How EEEEEVIL of Google to know this!

No, I'm not going to see the ads.

I use adblock and filterset.g. Even when there are ads on the page, I tune them out. When I want to purchase something, I research it. I don't need to have it shoved in my face. Advertising and marketing are a complete waste of human energy at best, evil m

Re:No, I'm not going to see the ads.

Gruh, I should have specifically said "no 'I use AdBlock' responses." Yes, we get it, a lot of Slashdot readers use AdBlock. I understand this. I've read the snarky "the web has ads? I use AdBlock so I don't see them" about 50,000 times this month alone! Yes, I know it exists. Yes, I know people use it. Yes, I choose not to as a way of supporting the sites I visit. No, you won't convince me to download it.

Sorry, those posts are irritating as hell. Please try to respond with original thoughts. Thank you.

Re:

Further to the above, I use a middle-road approach. I have AdBlock installed but I don't have any filters added. I'm fine with seeing ads, it's revenue for the sites I visit if they serve up something of interest to me. When an ad bugs me, I just selective

Re:No, I'm not going to see the ads.

Sorry, those posts are irritating as hell. Please try to respond with original thoughts. Thank you.

Were you saying something? I use DoucheBlock, so I don't see these things.

Re:No, I'm not going to see the ads.

Advertising and marketing are a complete waste of human energy at best, evil mind control black magic at worst.

Advertising in Most first world countries is anti-happiness. As explained by Professor Richard Layard: [abc.net.au]

"once people's basic economic needs are met additional income and wealth contributes little to an individual's happiness. What's more a society which encourages a focus on the self and its wants, and heightened individualism, tends to undermine the very things which psychological research now shows are crucial to feelings of happiness: close personal relationships, trust, and security. On top of this consumerism, advertising and the effects of the mass media heightens human beings' natural interest in 'status' and social comparisions. This means that in contemporary society people's lives are overly concerned with work, money, and how they are doing in 'the rat race'. Such a life focus is not intrinsically satisfying and so we have the prosperity paradox that for all the increased wealth in modern society people do not feel happier. [centreforc...ence.co.uk]

Re:

What utter bullshit. I read reviews, listen to friends, read, and research. I have never seen a ad and thought, "Wow, I NEED that even though I've never heard of it before."

When I want something, I will seek it out. I'm not a sheep, I don't need to be led

Re:

Where is the "your post advocates a..." for this?

Right here! Although I haven't worked hard on the s/spam/tracking/ bit. Off we go:

Your article advocates a

(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting tracking. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One

Nice Try

something like this would be impossible to enforce, and the data collection is almost always transparent to the user.

but if you really dont want to be tracked, just turn off your cookies! (although there are ways to track without using them)

Re:Nice Try

just turn off your cookies!

Ignoring for a moment the other ways to track me, I rather like being semi-permanently logged in to /. and a host of other sites. When I'm buying something, I don't want to have to go manually unblock the site so it can store my shopping cart data.

Does anyone know of a way to only block the "evil" cookies? I'd love something that blocked the tracking cookies, let the shopping cart ones through, and didn't require me to figure out which was which for each and every cookie.

More Opt-Out Registries

Oh yeah... where do I sign up for the "Do Not Spam" registry?

Individually register to stay anonymous...

What a great concept - for trackers: You individually register and have
to stay identifiable during all your browsing so trackers know it is you.
You allow them to track you so they stop tracking you.

Soundy like a great idea?

Yeah, to me neither.

Re:

Its poorly named. At least as proposed las year, it actually required the TRACKERS to register. So that you can easily opt out by downloading the list of trackers. See: http://infoadvocate.org/blog/2007/11/04/do-not-track-lists-and-registries/ [infoadvocate.org]

How do you "not track"

I'm probably not fully understanding, but how do you track people, but allow someone to "opt out". What I mean is, let's say you don't want DoubleClick to track you. So for them to abide by a "do not track" list, they need to set up some kind of identifier so that, when you visit a site where they would normally track you, they recognize it's you and stop tracking you. But that means you'd have to send them that identifier in every instance where they would track you, and they'd end up having to track you to make sure they don't track you.

I suppose they could just not store the collecting information, though. And no, I didn't RTFA.

Re:How do you "not track"

"I'm against picketing but I don't know how to show it" -Mitch Hedberg

Re:

They have a "opt-out" cookie value.

http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx [doubleclick.com]

The catch being that if you do clear your cookies, you'll have to re-set the opt out cookie as well.

If you care, here's the URL to opt-out of the other big ad network:

Easiest way to opt out

Get firefox, Noscript, and adblock plus. Block all the tracking websites! I have "google-analitics.com" (it's frightening how many websites have this embedded, even those without ads) "googlesyndication" "doubleclick" and lots of other on my "untrusted" list. Makes me 20% less paranoid.

Wouldn't it be smarter to just block the ads?

Wouldn't it be smarter to just block the ads instead? To prevent such cookies from touching one's computer?

Cookies

When you outlaw cookies, only outlaws will have cookies..... yum delicious cookies

Better than CAN-SPAM?

Judging from how much more spam I get since the CAN-SPAM law supposedly outlawed it, I don't think these online registries do anything but register a high-value contact address. The Do-Not-Call list is different, because the telcos control the calls, and there's a lot more legal precedent (teeth) in counterattacking harassing phonecalls.

It's interesting how despite telcos like AT&T declaring they're going to police the Internet for copyright violation, and otherwise snoop content and traffic as they please, they don't seem to be implementing network spam filters, like with do-not-spam registries. Even though that would be very popular with users, and give the telcos each an excuse to get our contact lists, "to use as whitelists" (or whatever else they want).

There really should be a major push to enforce protecting our privacy. Every email system should operate with a whitelist by default, so only people you add (and maybe people on their whitelist) can get through to you. What would work even better would be micropayments to the recipient for each email they receive, with payments waived (or charged back in bulk or net) for those on the whitelist. Make the micropayments settable by the user (and variable even in the whitelist). Then spammers could pay me to spam me, if they can afford it, and I can make money off being spammed if I set the micropayments low enough. My associates will get to me for free, and new associates can pay to get my attention, then get it refunded if I accept their new contact (and then put them on the whitelist).

Otherwise the noise in our messaging systems really degrade their high value, and inhibit our making using them second nature. Just like what would have happened to the telephone if it were as cheap for telemarketers to annoy us as it is for them to spam us.

oxymoron?

A "do not track" ... registry? Is this a late April fool's day joke? It sounds like it could backfire. Wouldn't it mean that websites that track at all would be LEGALLY REQUIRED to obtain some piece of identifying information about you to check against the registry? And how could you prove a violation? Wouldn't it still pretty much rely on "self-regulation"?

As an aside, I used to work in a marketing department that had separate "do not call", "do not mail", and "do not email" flags for all their customers. Our group's policy (I can't speak for the whole company) was that if any of those flags were set, we wouldn't put them on any kind of contact list. I think the decision was still based on economics -- they figured the benefit of marketing to a few more people was outweighed by the risk of angering those people: "I'm sorry, sir, I see that you asked not to be mailed or emailed any more offers, but you didn't say we couldn't CALL you!"

Re:

An exit node can MITM your cookies, posts, and other shit. Tor is not meant to be used 24/7 and it's not meant to be used to submit data(like form information) without encryption(HTTPS in this case) end to end. Exit nodes can see every packet going over th