Tracking is a big word right now. iPhones were found to be tracking your location and storing it, prompting Apple to release a quick fix. Google’s offices in Seoul, South Korea were raided over AdMob tracking. Any way your electronic activity can be traced and stored, there are several companies trying to figure out how to monetize that data.
Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va) will introduce a “Do Not Track” bill that would allow consumers to opt-out of online tracking and block websites and marketers from tracing their Internet activities. The “Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2011” would build on recommendations by the Federal Trade Commission which would govern enforcement of the act, according to the Washington Post.
This is a separate bill from the Consumers Online Privacy Bill of Rights that was introduced by Senators John McCain and John Kerry in April. Critics of that bill complained that the Bill of Rights did not go far enough, mostly because it did not contain a do-not-track clause in it.
According to the Post, the bill would require online companies to honor the choice of a user not to be tracked. Web companies would have to destroy or make anonymous user information when it was no longer useful (read: profitable).
The California legislature has proposed a do-not-track law and search giant Google has joined a lobby to oppose it. That makes it all but certain that Google would oppose a federal do-not track law as well.
Of the major browsers, Apple’s Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 have built-in do-not-track functionality. Google has released a browser extension for do-not-track but the Chrome browser itself does not have it built in.
Also introduced today from members of the House of Representatives is a bill that would prevent children from being tracked online. The bill would create guidelines for how marketers can track and target teenagers on the Internet. The bill would also protect teenagers from location tracking. This bill is pertinent considering the Sony PlayStation Network that was hacked with information of up to 70 million users, many of them adolescents, exposed.
