In a blow for privacy advocates in the US, the Federal Communications Commission said that they are not looking into forcing website and Internet companies to stop making it easy for them to track consumers’ online activities. But of course this is good news for tech companies who rely on either monetizing these data or using information gleaned from how people spend their time online to create new targeted products. This might also be the FCC’s way to convince people they’re not out to police the Internet with their net neutrality rules.
Activist group Consumer Watchdog petitioned the FCC last June to impose a technology called Do Not Track onto carriers, Internet providers, websites, etc so that the user has the option to not let these companies use the data that shows on their sites. This tech brings a “do not track” button that will send a message to website operators that they’re not giving permission to track or sell their data to affiliates or advertising agencies.
But the FCC said they have no plans of actually doing that or making it a requirement for companies like Google, Facebook, etc to use this technology. This comes after the agency has received criticism for their net neutrality rules that some say will eventually lead to regulating popular websites and online services. But the FCC emphasized that their powers just cover Internet providers and not websites.
What they’re trying to do now is to study how to set privacy expectations through net neutrality since enforcing a Do Not Track policy may somehow not work as evidenced by all the delays and issues that industry and privacy advocates. The current proposal before the World Wide Web Consortium has been criticized as well for not doing enough to protect the consumers.
VIA: The Washington Post
