Most people don't know this but cookies are not just for monsters and children (or me). They're trackers, simply no way of putting this delicately, that are probably following you wherever you go on the Internet
The Federal Trade Commission has called for online advertisers like Google to provide a mechanism for users to opt out of being tracked. Personally, that's the stupidest thing I've heard of Why should users have to opt out? It's like Facebook all over again. Give these guys an inch, they'll take a mile.
So Mozilla built into Firefox 4 a more comprehensive option to block tracking. IE9 from Microsoft has it and Apple's Safari will soon join these two browsers with the feature.
So, if you don't like being followed, check out Firefox and IE. From what I gather, it's not a perfected solution but it's a start. Congressional action may be coming to help guard user privacy. It'll probably have more bark than bite given expected intense lobbying from the industry but, again, it's a start
I'll get into how this works later when I have had a chance to check it out for myself.
I do want to mention that Google is probably not happy about this. After all, knowing about everything they can about us is how they make money. It's why many of its services are free. Ads. And Google does offer an extension for Chrome. I thought I mention this because many in the media are suggesting that Google is alone on this issue. (More on Google's own "Do Not Track" implementation)
Note: One might say that it's finally good to have Apple on board with this.
No comments:
Post a Comment