FTC recommends do-not-track tool.

• Position: PRIVACY

The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) recommendation to create a "do-not-track" tool that would enable Internet users to choose whether online advertisers could track their online activity may be coming, whether online businesses like it or not.

According to the FTC, online firms have failed to protect the privacy of Internet users. Many of the problems the FTC wants to end involve third parties that use technology to surreptitiously follow a user's every move online, collecting data and then selling it without the user's knowledge.

In a 79-page document, the commission recommended a vast framework for commercial use of online consumer data, including a simple, universal do-not-track mechanism that will give consumers control over online marketers just like they have over phone marketers through the national do-not-call registry.

If such measures are widely used, they could negatively affect the billions of dollars earned by online advertisers and technology giants like Google that collect highly specific information about consumers that is then used to send targeted advertising to them.

The FFC also wants companies to adopt simpler, more transparent ways of informing consumers of their options rather than the "long, incomprehensible privacy policies that consumers typically do not read, let alone understand." And the report recommends that data brokers give consumers "reasonable access" to any data they have collected.

Online advertisers are not happy about the prospect of a do-not-track list, but the response of large Internet firms (e.g., Google) has been surprising. Just weeks after the FTC released its report, Mozilla and Google announced they would implement features to enable Firefox and Chrome browser users to opt out of being tracked online by third-party advertisers.

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Alex Fowler, Mozilla's technology and privacy officer, said in a blog post that the company unveiled a proposed feature for its Firefox browser that would send a signal to third-party advertisers and commercial websites indicating a user did not want to be tracked, according to The New York Times.

Google's approach uses a browser extension, or plug-in, called Keep My Opt-Outs that is compatible...