Federal regulators are proposing to create a "Do Not Track" tool for the Internet so that people could avoid marketers from tracking their Web browsing habits and other online activities in order to target advertising.
The proposal, inspired by the government's existing "Do Not Call" registry for telemarketers, is one of a series of recommendations outlined in a privacy statement released Wednesday by the Federal Trade Commission. The report lays out a broad framework for protecting consumer privacy both online and offline as personal data collection becomes ubiquitous — often without consumer knowledge.
The FTC trust the report will help guide the marketing industry as it develops self-regulatory principles to define acceptable corporate behavior and inform lawmakers and other policymakers as they draft new rules of the road to protect privacy. The FTC has limited authority to write those rules itself, so new regulations would likely need congressional action.
Protecting consumer privacy, the agency says, is critical as marketers — mainly online marketers — are analyzing the websites consumers visit, the online links they click, Internet searches, online and offline purchases, the physical locations of mobile phones and other wireless devices and all sorts of personal information disclosed on social networking sites.
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