web browsers. If you’re using Google Chrome, here’s what the browser tells you when you check the “Do Not Track” command. “Enabling Do Not Track means that a request will be included with a person or company’s browsing traffic. Any effect depends on whether a website responds to the request, and how the request is interpreted. For example, some websites may respond to this request by showing you ads that aren’t based on other websites you’ve visited. Many websites will still collect and use your browsing data—for example to improve security, to provide content, services, ads and recommendations on their websites, and to generate reporting statistics.” Once you determine what your website does or does not do, add that information to your existing privacy policy or include it if you are generating one for the first time. • If your site does not respond to DNT signals, indicate this fact in the privacy policy; • If you respond to DNT in some way, the privacy policy should disclose how you respond to this signal; • Finally, your policy should disclose whether other parties may collect personally identifiable information about an individual consumer’s online activities over time and across different websites when a consumer uses your website or service.
Pros and Cons
Tracking website browsing behavior remains a controversial topic. Advertisers who do this often insist it provides visitors to their sites and to linked sites a more relevant experience. The Electronic Freedom Foundation takes a less sanguine view and supports ongoing efforts to regulate tracking. Google’s privacy policy states, “We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users. We also use this information to offer you tailored content—like giving you more relevant search results and ads.” Some prominent online social media companies, like Twitter and now Pinterest have announced that they will honor Do Not Track requests. Twitter is doing this by enabling the Do Not Track feature in the Firefox browser that enables people to opt-out of cookies that collect personal information and any third-party cookies, including those used for advertising. The Do Not Track functionality will only work if a website agrees to acknowledge it. Pinterest, which allows users to share photographs and other media on custom “pinboards,” joined the short list of companies that also give people that option. Pinterest is doing this by enabling the Do Not Track feature in certain Web browsers that allows people to avoid cookies that collect personal information as well as any third-party cookies, including those used for advertising. An article in the New York Times online by Natasha Singer, notes, “Of course, browsers like Firefox from Mozilla, Safari from Apple and even an earlier version of Internet Explorer already offered this choice for people who expressed a preference.
But Microsoft is going further—by making privacy a more public issue. The new Internet Explorer 10 comes with the don’t-track-me option automatically enabled, a fact that the software makes clear. During installation, a notice will appear giving users the choice to keep that preselected don’t-track-me preference as is, or switch it off on a customization menu. It’s a radical move for a technology company, especially one like Microsoft, with an ad business of its own.” “No one says today, when a consumer first loads a product, ‘Hey, by the way, there are some privacy choices you may want to consider,’ ” says Alex Fowler, the global privacy and policy leader at Mozilla. He believes that this may be the first time that privacy features so prominently in the first-run experience of a consumer software product.” Right now, however, people who raise the do-not-track flag are making a mostly symbolic choice, having their browsers send out a preference signal. Websites that receive the signal can honor it—or simply disregard it. In California, you just have to let people know what your website is doing.
Further Information
Better Business Bureau in Northeast California http://necal.bbb.org/sample-privacy/ Electronic Freedom Foundation https://www.eff.org Firefox http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/dnt/
New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/technology/in-microsofts-new-browserthe-privacy-light-is-already-on.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
California Law *To quote from Chapter 390 of Assembly Bill 370, an act to amend Section 22575 of the Business and Professions Code, relating to consumers Existing law requires an operator of a commercial Internet Web site or online service that collects personally identifiable information through the Internet about consumers residing in California who use or visit its commercial Web site or online service to conspicuously post its privacy policy on its Web site or online service and to comply with that policy. Existing law, among other things, requires that the privacy policy identify the categories of personally identifiable information that the operator collects about individual consumers who use or visit its Web site or online service and 3rd parties with whom the operator shares the information. This bill (370) also requires an operator to disclose how it responds to “do not track” signals or other mechanisms that provide consumers a choice regarding the collection of personally identifiable information about an individual consumer’s online activities over time and across different Web sites or online services. The bill would require the operator to disclose whether other parties may collect personally identifiable information when a consumer uses the operator’s Web site or service. VISUAL MEDIA ALLIANCE
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