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Do Not Track Discussion Has Become a Farce
Direct Marketing Association Not Even Trying...

The effort to get Do Not Track functionality embedded into browsers has descended into total farce. It was already farce in that neither the FTC, the W3C, nor the marketing, content and telecom industries really wanted to jeopardize the billions to be made from snoopertising by empowering consumers. But when Microsoft recently proclaimed they'd be enabling Do Not Track by default on IE 10, whether it was for the press, an edge on Chrome or altruism -- all discussion imploded. Last week a coalition against Do Not Track sent a letter to Microsoft crying that they were harming the Internet experience.

Consumer advocates say since Microsoft's announcement the marketing industry has stopped negotiating entirely, and the discussion over giving consumers a useful choice is all but dead. Ed Bott over at ZDNet, highlights just how absurd things have now become, pointing out a recent proposal by the marketing industry that would redefine "Do Not Track" as "yes sir, please track me all the time." The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) this week proposed this change to the Do Not Track standard:
quote:
Marketing should be added to the list of "Permitted Uses for Third Parties and Service Providers" in Section 6.1 of the Tracking Definitions and Compliance Document.
When asked to defend adding marketing to a standard designed to help consumers avoid intrusive marketing (apparently by one of the six people left who care about this stuff), the Direct Marketing Association launched into a tirade on the pure awesomeness of marketing:
quote:
Marketing fuels the world. It is as American as apple pie and delivers relevant advertising to consumers about products they will be interested at a time they are interested. DNT should permit it as one of the most important values of civil society. Its byproduct also furthers democracy, free speech, and – most importantly in these times – JOBS. It is as critical to society – and the economy – as fraud prevention and IP protection and should be treated the same way.
In short, it's pretty clear that nobody in any industry is serious about giving consumers tools to help deal with intrusive tracking ads, and the marketing industry in particular has completely stopped trying. With regulators totally asleep at the wheel for fear of impacting job creation or offending campaign contributors in an election season, you're not getting them anytime soon. Enjoy having everything you do tracked and sold all the time while being stored insecurely and with no rules governing any of it. What could possibly go wrong?

Most recommended from 31 comments



MooJohn
join:2005-12-18
Milledgeville, GA

2 recommendations

MooJohn

Member

Asking won't work

Simply asking a company to stop tracking obviously won't do the trick. That will be as effective as the Do Not Call list. The only thing left is active blocking via the already-mentioned browser extensions. If the marketers think they have a right or an obligation to force ads on us then it is our job to prevent that attempt. Giving the ads content based on what we searched recently or what site we viewed does not make the intrusion any more palatable.