By JULIA ANGWIN
A coalition of Internet giants including Google Inc. has agreed to support a do-not-track button to be embedded in most Web browsers—a move that the industry had been resisting for more than a year.
The reversal is being announced as part of the White House’s call for Congress to pass a “privacy bill of rights,” that will give people greater control over the personal data collected about them.
The industry has been caught in a number of high-profile privacy slip-ups. Facebook Inc. recently agreed to settle charges by the U.S. government that some of its privacy practices had been unfair and deceptive to users. And last week, Google acknowledged it had been circumventing the privacy settings of people using Apple Inc.’s Web-browsing software on their iPhones, iPads and computers. It stopped the practice after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.
The new do-not-track button isn’t going to stop all Web tracking. The companies have agreed to stop using the data about people’s Web browsing habits to customize ads, and have agreed not to use the data for employment, credit, health-care or insurance purposes. But the data can still be used for some purposes such as “market research” and “product development” and can still be obtained by law enforcement officers.
The do-not-track button also wouldn’t block companies such as Facebook Inc. from tracking their members through “Like” buttons and other functions.
“It’s a good start,” said Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “But we want you to be able to not be tracked at all if you so choose.”
The do-not-track button has been hotly debated ever since the Federal Trade Commission called for its adoption about two years ago. Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox Web browser was the first to add the do-not-track option early last year. Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer Web browser added it soon after, and Apple included it in the latest version of its operating system, Mountain Lion, which was released to developers this year.
But even people who clicked on the button were still being tracked because advertisers and tracking companies hadn’t agreed to honor the system.
Thursday’s announcement means they will work to begin adopting and honoring the system within nine months, according to the coalition, the Digital Advertising Alliance, which represents over 400 companies.
Speaking for the industry, Stuart Ingis, general counsel for the Digital Advertising Alliance, said the decision to adopt do-not-track is an “evolution” of the industry’s approach. Previously, the industry had been pushing for consumers to “opt out” of Web tracking by clicking on icons in individual advertisements that offered consumers a choice of blocking the customized ads. Mr. Ingis said that the industry will continue that approach while it’s in the process of adopting the do-not-track system.
Google is expected to enable do-not-track in its Chrome Web browser by the end of this year.
Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president of advertising at Google, said the company is pleased to join “a broad industry agreement to respect the ‘Do Not Track’ header in a consistent and meaningful way that offers users choice and clearly explained browser controls.”
White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Daniel Weitzner said the do-not-track option should clear up confusion among consumers who “think they are expressing a preference and it ends up, for a set of technical reasons, that they are not.”
Some critics said the industry’s move could throw a wrench in a separate year-long effort by the World Wide Web consortium to set an international standard for do-not-track. But Mr. Ingis said he hopes the consortium could “build off of” the industry’s approach.
FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz applauded the industry’s move as a “very important step forward.” He added the FTC would enforce compliance with the self-regulatory moves.
The Obama administration just concluded a two-year study of how to regulate the commercial collection of consumer data online. The administration’s report, expected to be released Thursday, calls for Congress to pass a “privacy bill of rights” that will give people greater control over the personal data collected about them.
Commerce Secretary John Bryson added the administration won’t wait for legislation before taking action on privacy. He said his agency will start convening industry groups and asking them to voluntarily agree to the privacy bill of rights guidelines.
“This approach gives us more speed and flexibility than the traditional regulatory process,” he said.
Separately, a group of dozens of state attorneys general have raised concerns with Google over the Internet giant’s updated privacy policy, marking the latest public flare-up over the planned changes. In a letter addressed to Google Chief Executive Larry Page on Wednesday and signed by more than 30 attorneys general, the National Association of Attorneys General wrote that Google’s new policy of consolidating privacy practices across products “is troubling for a number of reasons.”
In a statement a Google spokesman said that, “Our updated Privacy Policy will make our privacy practices easier to understand, and it reflects our desire to create a seamless experience for our signed-in users.”