Sparks Fly over Do-Not-Track Delays

Protagonists in the US debate about the protection of online consumer data appear to be pursuing at least three conflicting strategies, with ad industry trade group the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) deflecting criticism from senators onto browser makers Microsoft and Mozilla (Firefox).

At a hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation last week, Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said the DAA had failed to honor a pledge made to the White House a year ago to honor all Do Not Track requests made by consumers by the end of 2012.

DAA Managing Director Luigi Mastria said the browser companies had stalled the process by independently bringing in their own changes with the release of new browsers: Microsoft implementing the default blocking of online tracking in IE9 in 2012, and Mozilla announcing a test program that will block third-party cookies by default.

Rockefeller however said 'ad industry folks' were 'continuing to ignore do-not-track headers' and added that he believed they were 'dragging their feet... purposefully.' According to Mastria, the ad industry is willing to move immediately on an agreement, but the browser giants have 'short-circuited' the process by 'letting the browser make the choice, not the consumer'.

Mozilla general counsel Harvey Anderson called this accusation 'just offensive', pointing out that Firefox sends out 4 trillion do-not-track signals every month which are 'largely ignored' by ad networks, and that the process of addressing the pledge to the White House had been held up long before the Microsoft and Mozilla launches.

The committee's next meeting is scheduled for May 6th in California. Rockefeller says companies 'continue to collect vast amounts of consumer information and only promise to not use this information for specific purposes, such as targeted advertising', and seems likely to support legislation such as that introduced in February, which would prohibit sites from collecting personal information from users who ask not to be tracked.

Thanks to www.law360.com for some of the above.