{"id":304,"date":"2010-12-09T22:56:13","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T06:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/internetsafety.trendmicro.com\/?p=304"},"modified":"2010-12-09T22:56:13","modified_gmt":"2010-12-10T06:56:13","slug":"do-not-track-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/internet-safety\/blog\/do-not-track-list\/","title":{"rendered":"What the U.S. FTC\u2019s \u2018Do Not Track\u2019 List Means to You and Your Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a>By Lynette T. Owens<\/p>\n

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is pushing for consumer privacy legislation that would give you the ability to stop websites from tracking your surfing habits. \u00a0\u00a0Sites track you partly to make your surfing experience easier \u2013 remembering what you last looked at on a shopping site, in case you want to look at it again \u2013 and to show you ads that are more likely to be of interest to you.<\/p>\n

The proposal, called the \u2018Do Not Track\u2019 List<\/a>, shares its name with the \u2018Do Not Call\u2019 registry which prevents telemarketers from calling you if your number is on that list.\u00a0 But that\u2019s as far as the similarities go.\u00a0 Unlike the \u2018Do Not Call\u2019 registry, the FTC proposal recognizes the benefits to tracking, so it instead calls for user-choice in deciding which sites can or cannot track you.<\/p>\n

It specifically calls for a feature that is ideally part of your web browser, where you can enable a setting that tells the browser if a site can track you.\u00a0 And Microsoft has recently responded to this with a feature called Tracking Protection that will be in IE9 (currently in beta).\u00a0 It will let you create a list of sites you don\u2019t want tracking your online activities and block them from doing so.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As a busy working mom, I\u2019m not all that worried about being tracked online for legitimate reasons.\u00a0 I do a lot of shopping online (thank you, Peapod) and love the convenience of having items that I\u2019ve bought before presented to me up front.\u00a0 And the ads?\u00a0 I\u2019d prefer to know about products that are similar or complementary to things I buy.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have time to discover them on my own.<\/p>\n

As for my kids, I only have one issue.\u00a0 If they\u2019re online, they\u2019re going to be on age-appropriate sites.\u00a0 And most of those sites are maintained by reputable companies.\u00a0 But I do care if they\u2019re on a site and age-inappropriate ads show-up.\u00a0 It\u2019s a rare occurrence in my experience, but I\u2019ve seen ads for credit cards and dating services on sites that are presumably designed for kids as young as 8 (Neopets.com is my favorite example of this).\u00a0 These sites don\u2019t seem to care who their audience is \u2013 they\u2019ll take the advertising money from anyone.\u00a0 This is a case where tracking and targeted advertising would be a very good thing.<\/p>\n

The FTC proposal does discuss many other issues related to online privacy beyond the \u2018Do Not Track\u2019 list.\u00a0 It calls for privacy to be considered from the beginning as part of technical design, and puts special attention on the privacy of kids.\u00a0 Bravo for this.\u00a0 It also demands that privacy policies be much more consumer-friendly (many adults don\u2019t read them, much less kids). The privacy policy of the world\u2019s most heavily used social networking sites (hint: starts with \u2018F\u2019 and ends in \u2018book\u2019) is a whopping 6,000+ words.\u00a0 And, it calls for greater public education about online privacy.\u00a0 I second that.<\/p>\n

So with all of the attention to online privacy and potential changes to the technologies we use everyday, parents should be aware of what this really means:<\/p>\n

1 \u2013 A browser doesn\u2019t equal a person.\u00a0 In my house, the family computer and web browser are shared by many people. \u00a0So I\u2019m not sure how a do not track setting in our browser really helps the individual, especially on sites that don\u2019t require you to login.\u00a0 Regardless, don\u2019t mistake a Do Not Track browser setting for being completely safe.\u00a0 Teach your kids safe online surfing habits and always, always use up-to-date security software.<\/p>\n

2 \u2013 Privacy is in the eye of the surfer.\u00a0 I like that Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are free.\u00a0 I think many millions feel the same.\u00a0 But while I don\u2019t pay for them someone does: the advertisers.\u00a0 For this balance to exist I give up something and that is information.\u00a0\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s my online activity or an email address, I exchange something that makes it worth it for advertisers to invest the way they do.\u00a0 But I only give out the absolute minimum necessary, and I tell my kids to do the same.<\/p>\n

3 \u2013 It\u2019s non-legitimate tracking you should worry about.\u00a0 Advertisers track you and your kids to sell you something.\u00a0 Cybercriminals track you to steal something.\u00a0 While we need to teach kids to protect their own privacy and reputation online, we need to also teach them how to protect their information from hackers and identity thieves.\u00a0 Advise them to stick to reputable sites, post and share as little personal identifying information as necessary, and make sure any internet-connected device they are using has up-to-date security software.<\/p>\n

For more Internet safety advice and tips, go to www.trendmicro.com\/internetsafety<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is pushing for consumer privacy legislation that would give you the ability to stop websites from tracking your surfing habits. It specifically calls for a feature that is ideally part of your web browser, where you can enable a setting that tells the browser if a site can track you. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[35,6,16,36,5,25,10,23,28],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-parents","category-for-teachers","tag-do-not-track-list","tag-education","tag-facebook","tag-ftc","tag-internet-safety","tag-online-privacy","tag-online-safety","tag-privacy","tag-right-to-privacy","wpautop"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/internet-safety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/internet-safety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/internet-safety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/internet-safety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/internet-safety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/internet-safety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/internet-safety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/internet-safety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/internet-safety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}